Found Wanting

The waitress asks
if I want anything else--

as if I wanted what I already had,
as if I could remember wanting.
____

Note: This poem is perhaps a bit too simple, needs more context for most readers. The waitress's question simply jolted me into awareness of how far I'd become estranged from my own desires, how much I was ordering the food I was used to thinking I liked and eating it without much enjoyment, how little "wanting" had to do with my life at that point. One orders apple pie because once as a kid it tasted great. One "enjoys" eating it (even though the crust is like sugary cardboard) because one is supposed to, as if telling oneself with each mouthful, "This is apple pie -- YUM!" -- or one gobbles it down without noticing it except to score a point for oneself in the battle against the universe for having achieved another apple pie a la mode. Buddha said we should rise above desire, but first I think we need to rise TO desire and learn, again, to live with gusto.

Then there's the clerk who asks, "Can I help you"...but that's another story.