Poetry | Andrew Najberg

My wife tells me in the lamplight

after everyone else has gone to sleep

that sometimes she hopes

 

our children won’t have children

because they will suffer what

we leave behind, that we are

 

the last lucky ones to whom plenty

means more than we need

rather than more than we have.

 

I can’t comprehend how my hypothetical

grandchildren might live. They’ll use

food science as one word. Land

 

on asteroids, Mars, control computers

with their minds. Maybe they’ll

pre-program their dreams like mixtapes.

 

My daughter and I talk about this

and that; her classes, my day, the movie

we watch, but could we evolve beyond

 

mouths and simply think with each other?

Can we still have hands that can hold?

My wife and I lie on the couch, tired,

 

the sound low. Outside, trees on the slopes,

millions of cicadas and crickets in them,

the darkness shattered infinitely in their song.