I’ve waited in line behind two nuns this week.
The first was at the bank. She was
going over a bank charge she had incurred,
at length and many times over, with the teller.
The realization arose, that she was
a nun, by way of being third in line
and overhearing her talk with the teller.
She was so courteous and polite
and articulate, unlike many women in San Diego
her age, their hair the gray of certain nuns’ habits,
who first arrived with the war. And I
said to myself, “Bless you.”
I thought, “God bless you, for if it were not
for love, and your incandescent nimbus,
you’d have withered and disappeared,
and vanished from the earth, well before this.”

 The second was shopping in the mall –
She wore a gray habit. And a big cross.
She was young, pale, fair-haired, homely,
but the temptation of untoward associations
held my attention, a conspiracy
of the senses and imagination.