Anywhere

The boy’s been on the computer all morning
playing virtual baseball, June
sliding by in a huge yellow silence
beyond the window as he clicks the keys

to send the phantom players running
the base paths under a virtual sky
in a nameless city’s digital summer.

Naturally I brood about this as I work
in the garage, fixing his bike’s
out-of-whack derailleur. In my day,
I find myself starting to say, before
my father’s fossil phrase
catches in my craw—

Better to speak with this tool in my hand,
this old-fashioned screwdriver,
its Phillips head buried in the steel
crux of the material world, the torque
flowing from my old-fashioned wrist

so chain will rise from sprocket, and power
from a boy’s legs will carry him from home
and down the afternoon to nowhere
in particular, or anywhere: places
I used to head for on a summer day.