Prayer of the Wasted Life

1.4.2013 Prayer

I have wasted my life.

          -James Wright

 

This is a prayer for all of the wasted moments,

days, hours badly spent, forays into the Internet

jungle-land of links from the launch of the words

symptoms of recurrent breast cancer. For tangled

sheets and novels whose plots and themes are

long-lost, for staring at the ceiling in the dark, trying

not to blink. For wasted fivers at coffee shops,

and browsing bookstalls waiting for delayed flights.

For batches of chocolate chip procrastination

and Scrabble moves, and movies, and the weather

underground. For taking way too long to choose

outfits, trying sweater after earring, convincing

yourself you require new shoes and a more neutral

color scheme. For subsequent stops in shops or www

whatever dot com to search for nothing you need,

shelling out money you don’t own. For magazines,

and staring out the window waiting for dawn, or night,

or the mail truck, or the right line for a failed poem.

For lingering near the duck pond for no good reason.

Arranging books on shelves alphabetically and by

size. To what purpose? For cleaning, and getting rid

of stuff and writing long emails. Wiping crumbs off

counters, and streaks, and smears of butter-substitute.

Cooking, generally, an excuse not to do something else.

Weeding. For God’s sake, a waiting room, is what this

looks like.  Outside, why are those trees just

standing there? Bum-birds hitched to their bum-limbs.

Wind blowing errant tinsel and what-knots

hither and yon. Everything waiting for the cows

to come home, when they won’t, ever. They’re cows,

and need to be driven. This is a prayer for

the gorgeous, blessed waste of it all.