What a Waste

Of daily poem number two thirty-three
I feel like I have too much and nothing
To say. My mind keeps returning to waste,
A compulsion itself likely wasteful.

We're not choosing whether or not to waste.
We're only choosing which waste we prefer.
If I don't eat the hardboiled egg I dropped,
It won't end up in a human stomach.

Does that mean I wasted it? What about
The gallon of high-octane gasoline
I squandered to get Sequoia to sleep
And give Sarah a couple hours of peace?

Was that wasteful? Is it worse to waste time
Than money, money than love, love than time?
Is wasting Earth's resources worst of all?
I can't think of a save that's not wasteful.

The hour I spent sorting our recycling
I could have heaved in the Moab landfill.
The income I lost or forwent to cadge
Opportunity for travel, the oil

I then squandered as means to that travel,
The friendships lost to save some time alone,
The time alone tossed to save some romance,
The romance overlooked for principle,

All the cut corners, discarded towels,
Words hoarded only for poems, energy
Wasted collecting change I never spent, 
And by not spending, somehow, still wasted.