Remember your first chess set?
Plastic, hollow pieces, same as those
all your friends had?
Or the luxury set you gave to grandpa for his birthday:
maple and walnut board, rosewood pieces?
Or the one in your living room –
clear and frosted glass, where you still debate
which is black and which is white?
Forget all those.
Your next set will be crafted on this 3-D printer,
customised to your exact style, colour, and size.
Each piece
a marvel of precision engineering,
with accuracy in the range of 20 microns, or
less than half the width of a human hair.
The Game of Kings
will never be the same again.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
