Book Smarts

“You’re so literate”
she told me,
with stars in her eyes,
as though reading is the pinnacle,
and I felt like
the whitest man,
a most colonial man,
as if books didn’t only get me dreaming,
and thinking, and never doing.
The day I harvest my own tomatoes
while I listen to a hand-built radio
is the day
I’ve finally learned something useful.

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