Gerry Jacobson

Left to Our Own Devices

little Princess
sits up in bed …
it’s Saturday
and there is nothing
but her iPad
 
controlling
a world she cares about
as long as
wi-fi lasts and
she can find her charger

Pappa tries to get her off screens, suggests a swim in the lake. After all it’s 22 and sunny, a Swedish summer’s day. But she sits with iPad glued to face, totally absorbed in some virtual world. I’m in the corner reading. An hour passes. Two. She’s now looking at her phone. I send an SMS: “Hi Eira, this is your farfar texting.” A few seconds later I hear a ping: the message has travelled via Australia. She looks up, smiles at me across the room.

dropping
out of the sky
into Eira’s life
perhaps I’m a ghost
from the old century
 
that grey snake
slithers into loose rocks
beside the lake
I hide behind
covers of a book

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About the Author

Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia, and can be found writing tanka in its cafés. He was a geologist in a past life and now celebrates reincarnation as a dancer.

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