A Visitor Encounters the Small Screen

by Donald Yeats

Bach is here, watching
CNN’s endless coverage
of war; he wants me to tell him what a
Bradley Fighting Vehicle is; he looks
confused, skeptical, says
the desert is the wrong color, says
the sky is the wrong color, says
the only music he hears is
the massive, insistent grumble
of gears, earnest voices
talking in goosey hiccups about
missile attacks, over-flights, collateral
damage. And I say
I’m not sure what a Bradley
Fighting Vehicle is; I say it carries troops
into battle, and that it’s very expensive. He asks

for wine.
I tell him I have none, only Pepsi.
He looks at me a long, long moment,
then looks at the TV, again, at
the orange sand
and the aqua-marine sky and the
olive drab machines moving
inexorably into
the moment, and then into
the moment; he says
he wants to know
about Pepsi.

Copyright 2003 by Don Yeats

Donald Yeats, who says he has no relationship to the poet William Butler Yeats, is a computer programmer from Fargo, North Dakota. He’s been writing poetry "most of his life," has published poems in "obscure magazines," and adds that this publication in Writer Online is his "most important.