The Deja Vu Du Jour

College should have been a great place to learn
things that would have done me some good.

Which beer should be the last beer of the night;
when to raise the bet in a good poker game;
why you shouldn't look a dangerous woman in
the eye until you know what she's after; or
how to know a poem worth your time in two stanzas.

I don't know what I was thinking, taking Astronomy.

I haven't met a single woman impressed with my
one-semester knowledge of constellation names --
whether I could quote Neruda in the original Spanish
or not -- under a salty, spangled summer night,
not one impression worth remembering.

17th Century Reconstruction Literature?
What a waste, compared with knowing what a mortgage
can do to your guts, or how to be with someone dying slow.

I was in a great institution.
Hear me: blame is mine.

Looking back though, if I was writing core curriculum,
there would have been a class on cooking for one.
Single Serving Dining 304: all the skills needed for preparing
one thick pork chop, a reasonable pile of broccoli,
an ambitious, surprise of a salad, and
an entire lecture on using garlic to gross excess.

I can't seem to manage the meal for one, try as I might.

I shut the grill off, finish the work on the stove, and
there's always food enough for two, at least.
And it's the deja vu du jour, again tonight:
I've had all I want, can't manage another bite of this,
and here lies so much still unfinished.
There is always the work of dealing with what's left over.