Scrabble in the Time of Social Distancing

  to Richard

We start by laying out the tiles,
the deluxe set your mother bought
one Christmas long ago, the one
with off-white tiles, like teeth, matching
brackets to lay out the words, metal pegs 
to tote up points. Best of all, a board 
that we could spin to face us, each 
in turn. We couldn’t wait to pick out 
letters, ponder combinations, gnawing 
on your mother’s peanut butter cookies 
till the board stuck to the table and the 
buttermilk was gone. The others hated
playing us. We always won. Now, it’s you 
and me, the kid grown up and moved away. 
Worthy partners and opponents, curators 
of words, we challenge one another. 
You lose a turn, then I do. I’m stuck 
with the x; too many vowels. You find 
a clever way to use the Q. There’s no one 
here but us. It hardly matters that some 
tiles are missing. We don’t mind the gaps, 
forget for just a moment empty streets 
and dire statistics. Let’s make it last. 
We’re pondering the choices we still have. 
Everyone we ever played stays in the game.

*This poem was a Finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.

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Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012) and three collections: A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). She has also edited three anthologies--The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014), Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees (published as a special issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal in 2017), and a new one that hasn't yet found a home. She is an elected member of the Academy of American Poets, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies.