Melissa Studdard: "I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast"

              

          

—After Thich Nhat Hanh

It looked like a pancake,

but it was creation flattened out—
the fist of God on a head of wheat,
milk, the unborn child of an unsuspecting
chicken—all beaten to batter and drizzled into a pan.
I brewed my tea and closed my eyes
while I ate the sun, the air, the rain,
photosynthesis on a plate.
I ate the time it took that chicken
to bear and lay her egg
and the energy it takes a cow to lactate a cup of milk.
I thought of the farmers, the truck drivers,
the grocers, the people who made the bag that stored the wheat,
and my labor over the stove seemed short,
and the pancake tasted good,
and I was thankful.

"I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast" by Melissa Studdard. Published online by Ishaan Literary Review, Issue #3 (Spring 2013). © Melissa Studdard.

Photography credit: "Fried pancake background close-up," by Aleksandr Lobanov.