The Falcon

After hearing my child’s heartbeat for the first time,

I drove to a Target to buy a new coffee maker.

I pushed my red cart around looking for Kitchen

but wandered into Toys, where frenetic mothers

shopped for video games, dolls, and action figures.

Looking for the proper aisle, I thought Mother

was the same with me when I was growing up.

Transformers, GI Joes, Star Wars. Even if she

wasn’t fluent in English, she’d find the right

captain, Jedi, servant, starship, robot, or sage.

Despite everything I got as the only child in the

family, both on Mother’s and Father’s side,

I was a pretty polite kid, which made my mother

only spoil me more. Once, I was a little sick

and it was the Millenium Falcon, the Star Wars

flagship, a wonderful toy, large as the dirt bike,

which I got a different year. She scoured the town

for the exact ship, asking in her broken English,

“Falcón?...Falcón?” Pronouncing it even better,

more Latinate than any native speaker could.

When she brought it home, I thought George Lucas

himself was in my room, directing the stars.

Yoda, in his little beige robe, Han Solo in boots

and leather jacket, beautiful Princess Leia

in her skimpy gown, and Darth Vader, the black

avian-like helmet, which even spooked Mother.

“How could you like this things?” she’d say

with a smile, relishing, sometimes even more

than I, having achieved her boy’s furtive delight.

I unwrapped the joyously difficult to open box

and pulled out the means to fly through space,

the fight between good, evil, darkness and light.