Wishes for a better Mind

I wish I could pick up a book,
flip through the pages
and know everything that
was there to learn, as practical as
how to sew a better corn bag,
as cognitively challenging as
how to numerically solve an ordinary
differential equation using
Matlab 2008b, as important as

how poliovirus replicates.
I wish I could listen to someone
speak and understand all they said,
as well as all that was left unsaid,
whether it was a lecture on
the hypotheses surrounding
the end of snowball earth,
or whether what they were saying
was true or used to manipulate.
I wish I had a better memory
so I could pick up that smooth
serpentine African rock in
my kitchen and remember its story.
I would even stop ordering the same
movies over and over from NetFlix.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste
and I wish I could
inhale the world
of knowledge
whole.