Hope Universal
What happens when a galaxy eats its neighbor?
the boy reads aloud from Discover online.
His mother, arcade queen of 1979,
pictures Pac-Man gobbling little yellow dots,
targets so flat and mundane they’re almost alien
to the boy, who navigates three-dimensional
Super Mario Galaxy like he’s an astronomer.
Or a Jedi fighter. A dangerous occupation,
his mother knows, and she worries: What happens
when a boy is addicted to PlayStation and Wii?
But the boy, still reading, stops on the phrase
rivers of stars to say
that’s nice, meaning the language,
not the aftermath of a cosmic invasion,
and her heart explodes, a supernova
flinging hope into the universe where,
elegant in black velvet and satellite bling,
Venus waits in the night like a sure lover,
winks her seductive eye
at the man he will become.