Meditation on a Grapefruit

Meditation on a Grapefruit

To wake when all is possible before the agitations of the day have gripped you

To come to the kitchen and peel a little basketball for breakfast

To tear the husk like cotton padding,

a cloud of oil misting out of its pinprick pores

clean and sharp as pepper

To ease each pale pink section out of its case so carefully without breaking

a single pearly cell

To slide each piece

into a cold blue china bowl

the juice pooling until the whole

fruit is divided from its skin

and only then to eat

so sweet a discipline

precisely pointless a devout

involvement of the hands and senses

a pause a little emptiness

each year harder to live within

each year harder to live without