Happy thanksgiving

As I watch the bird flap its helpless wings, scattering the blood like paint onto the pristine white feathers;  I see the bullet hole as big as its tiny head hang toward the feather bedded ground.
As I reluctantly pull the feathers crisply out of the scaly skin, I watch the words come out of my mouth as if I was a kindergartner with no other vocabulary except “gross”.
I slowly retreat back with a fixed gaze and allow the experts to do their work.
I’ve been invited back again to pluck two more birds. Two happy free range, mostly organic dinners that will joyfully be received by customers who have been on a waiting list for years.
I spontaneously blurt out no, but change my mind after participating in the sacred ritual of the gutting and cleaning.
A ritual that our ancestors could not escape and knew the process as closely as breathing.
How convenient a life we have; I think to myself the very next day, as I open the top of my almond shake and gulp down the contents.
I grew no nut; gathered nothing.
I did not press, or grind or pulverize them into a pulp.
The deliciousness of my mid-day snack was not produced by my hands.
I easily grabbed it off the shelf of the market and eagerly peeled open the packaging with admiration for its decoration.
I work, sometimes hard; sometimes not, inside a steel and wood building; upon a concrete floor, over a paved platform; in order to generate money to buy me this sustenance.
The very ground in which produces the meal is vanished among the box that serves so necessary to mine own survival.
My awareness of this is a blind dot in creating a solution to the disconnection that supports our culture.
A great sadness that I, nor the bearded hen I briefly made acquaintance with can rectify in this lifetime.