The Millennial Pedestrian

I’m in a poetry class in the continuing education program at Brown. Our last workshop assignment went something like this: Pick a poem by Galway Kinnell from the reading you did this week, then write a poem using the exact same number of words per line and the same number of lines. Kinnell’s poem, "Wait," will appear in this space next week.  

Eat
(Modeled on “Wait,” by Galway Kinnell)

Eat, just eat.
You don’t have to stuff yourself.
But look at what’s before you:
an iridescent fish caught this morning
sautéed so it’s crispy
on the outside, sweet
within, tasting subtly of the brine in which it swam
until your uncle Pedro’s barbed bait
fooled it into forgetting there’s no
free lunch, not even in the ocean
where the currency and exchange rates are set
by bigger, swifter, stronger members of the food chain
represented here by wily uncle Pedro’s
choice of lure.

Eat.
Celebrate your good fortune.
You’re looking at the plate,
not on it. You could
be a bluefish in your
next life. Maybe
not the worst
outcome, but rapacity is a one-dimensional
existential prototype, satisfying to a point but not allowing for a
single moment of reflection. As you eat your
fish, rejoice not only in its presence but in its preparation.