Working Together

There's enough to go around.

Photo by Kevin Mueller on Unsplash

Inspired by; "A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song."- Maya Angelou

We must harvest all of the fruit from the trees

before the crow enters the garden.

This is the premise of My First Garden,

my son’s favorite board game at the moment.

We roll the wooden die,

thoughtfully crafted in Germany,

and rejoice when it lands on red, blue, yellow or green,

transporting the wooden fruit into our cardboard basket.

When we land on the crow,

the wooden figurine is moved one step closer to the garden.

We are collaborating.

I tell my son,

“that’s when we work together.”

He accepts my definition with, “Oh,”

as if working together is as natural

as the sun rising in the morning.

It doesn’t matter if the crow gets in the garden

before we harvest the fruit.

We are happy to share—we compromise.

“Okay, mister crow, we will share our fruit with you. Just please leave some for us so we can enjoy it.”

The same drama unfolds in our garden outside,

as the crows eye the blossoming walnut tree.

There is plenty to share,

just leave some for us.

I wonder what this game is doing to my son's brain.

I wonder what was done to my brain,

to have grown up in the 80s,

when playing a collaborative game

would have had me cast as soft, a sissy,

as being out of touch with reality.

Unlike Monopoly,

which despite being created

to illuminate the economic consequences of corporate greed,

taught me and my peers that the world is

dog eat dog,

winner take all,

and you better not be on the losing side of the equation.

Not preparing me to be a cocaine sniffing,

suit and tie wearing capitalist

who tramples upon everything in my path to hoard what is rightfully mine.

As I watch my son share the fruits

of his pretend and physical gardens,

I trust he is being sculpted into someone

who may share with crows instead of scaring them.