Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
My friends did not believe I had a prayer of success in food service.
At Diau’s Delicatessen I learned how to make the Sonny and Cher,
Bebe Rebozo, Perry Como, the Joni Mitchell, and how at closing
to clean the pastrami from the blade of the slicer.
At Le Country Restaurant I learned how to plate Fettucine Alfredo,
flambé Cherries Jubilee, and how to keep diners patient
with a third round of Manhattans.
They suspected my new calling held more promise.
At Massachusetts General Hospital I learned that an autopsy
was a strenuous matter requiring a saw,
and that my tears hid rage.
At St. John’s Church I learned how to put together the cardboard mite boxes for Lent,
how to allay the fears of fathers of the bride about my sex (that’s what we called it then),
and how to bury the dead.
At the College of the Holy Cross I learned how to get the Crusaders
on their required day off to read and discuss the Gospel of Thomas
and in Intro how to finesse the Virgin Birth.
At Seminary of the Southwest I learned how to belong
to a faculty, how to remember and how to forget,
how to gather stones and cast them away.
I practiced persuading, patience, fury, forgetting. finessing.
I slipped out of danger in the nick of time lots of times,
until the calling hung smooth like the cowled alb
and brushed a hair above the floor.
