Land of Privilege

I spoke with my grandmother,

I have not earned the right to be so slothful as to read fiction.

Every moment is a fleeting tablecloth of time to set.

One can invest nourishment of learning or regret,

So with this Sunday morning I made a list for the day:

To call my cousin and see how she is doing after the accident and

Peering out to the advent of her first adult job.

I will change the feces ridden waste-water dousing my daughter’s turtles in the garage

These environments are changed weekly and so I must see that the reptiles

Do not escape this time into the garden smashing their skin against the house bricks

As if that led to a bayou and once grown they may not be made into soup

As I prepared from a frozen snapping version of their genetic cousins yesterday

Purchased from the Westwego, Louisiana shrimp lot and mixed with a trinity

Of onions, bell peppers, celery awash in cayenne, sherry and boiled chicken menstruation

The brew was primordial reaching back into seeing the texture in the muscle tissue

Divergent, but similar in ultimate origin to crustaceans, birds or mammals

Typically in the pot so that I may shop on the web to Amazon 

After signing up for a habitat for humanity volunteer day on August third

I hunt for musical entrees from standard bearers that I may not have uncovered in full as of yet

To Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Big Mama Thorton, George Carlin, and Nirvana

With a tribute to Woody and Lead Belly and no break to pray the rosary in front of the television

Like you do so beautifully every wake and riding your stationary bicycle

To keep the cells in your legs reminded that you are committed to life

I am wandering my kindle electronic library showing you the range

From Hitchens, Einstein, Dawkins, Hawking, Sagan, Freud, Jung, Kierkegaard and on and on

So that, no I have not earned the right as to read fiction yet,

I must invest in the foundation of the countless lifetimes set before me

Read, listen, consider, and write on occasion what pops in, but perpetually

Cognizant that to move forward it behooves oneself to be armed

With the ammunition of those bearing the badge of a lifetime of committed hours

Pushing the barrier of human understanding that inch further so that I might dare to drive on

Another measure, however incremental I was not so foolish to place myself

In the land of privilege to take a Sunday for such indolent practice of worship

Or assumption that I need bake the bread from the start and claim accomplishment

Ignoring the measures of ration set before sleeping in libraries like oxygen

Waiting to be breathed in by inquisitive children of the trees

Daring to grow humbly like the tortoise, aging slowly, watching

Lungs inflating, deflating methodically observing the universe

In the basic act of respiration

Penance, veneration in a building to statues

Idolatry with commandments against idolatry,

Oh the time wasted that could be spent,

So I am reading, listening, viewing, observing

So that I may do

I do in the ocean of empathy through the jungle land

Basking on the shores of vagabonds begging for a purpose

Wanting so completely to be needed

Knowing we are all lost and found inside cities

Constructed, bought, sold, and demolished inside ourselves

We see the streets melted and rising like phoenixes waltzing

As seconds dancing away into the oblivion of moments

We can never have back

Grandmother,

One day I may read fiction, but it is not that day yet.