"convent dreaming, 1965...."

"bless me father,
for I have sinned..."

I say it over and over again with
a fervent reverence...I think I have it right...
my mother's pearls spilling
between my fingers
through praying hands

"....but I really haven't
...sinned, that is"

I am not a sinner
I am jsut a wisp of a girl
wanting to be holy

a child who dreams in
habits and cloistered cells
and spinning on a mountain top
before the convent wakes

I am not-yet-grown
and yet, I practice walking
noiselessly through the world
hoping to become
no more than a kind face
in a sister's robe and
a whimple

I am a sister of mercy
on saturdays
with an abbess for a mother
and a convent for a home
the speckled linoleum in our suburban
kitchen
is prayer-polished cobblestone
beneath my hands.

I accept my duties without resistance
as I am a postulant in training,
my nightgown a noviate's robes of innocence

as summer turns to fall
I harvest our garden and
bake grainy loaves of simple bread...
this is what they do...right?

I know my fate and
walk into it like a woman drawn
to deep waters...
eager to give up
fresh air
for gills.

to breathe holy water...

to climb every mountain,

to have confidence in sunshine...

to start at the very beginning...

to be
a sister,
a governess,
a wife,
a friend,
a mother,
a woman....

to be something
with meaning,
and to sing...

yes, I would also like to sing...
to sing
from a mountaintop
in a convent,
on a bus,
during a storm,
around a gazebo,
through a city,
for a captain,
with marionettes,
under the stars....

to God.

most of all,
she made me want to
sing to God...