Peanuts in shells

I grew up in a world where peanuts were in shells:
you had to do the work to get them out,
share with squirrels in the Company Gardens,
then take the train home,
and walk the necessary steps
to your family door.

I have tried to shell my computer,
but nothing's inside
there.

The data's unbelievable, really,
hardly makes sense.

And there's little to bite into.
If you can smell a single peanut
in that forest of mumbled trees,
good luck to you.

They told me a black cat meant
bad luck. I tried licking that tongue-
twister.

I'd sit down with a real person, if I could
find one, and shell a few things, with that
special one, and find a taste that belongs
to us.

You can screen a candidate but not
a friend.
And I will never accept that the loving things
in living
can be computed.
And now I go to make a sandwich
the content of which
you will never guess.

I'll share it with a friend, as I once did,
long ago
in the shadow of a telescope
glancing up at a night sky,
while I bit into a hunger of
chutney and cheese.
At two in the morning, that's not bad.

But now I'm thinking all the way back to
peanuts, unshelled,  and my life's story-teller,
on the train back home.
I remember, she hurt her finger in a
slammed train-door, steel on skin.
And I hurt, too, for that finger,
all these years later,
wanting to get that inner thing out
in a world that no longer
separates the work from the wonder
of that inner thing,
even if it's a
peanut.