Teaching my heart out

When I came to the Convent
to teach technology to the girls in the Middle School,
some told me I might find the religious side of me,
and, truth be told,
I attended all the masses,
and though I never partook of communion,
I listened as I heard the girls sing their hymns every Friday morning at Mass
in a newly restored chapel that was as wide as a city block
and it seemed to me that I was as close to hearing a choir of heavenly angels
as I was ever going to get
and I worried why I should be so moved.
But, after working here 4 months, 12 hours a day,
they told me my contract would not be renewed
despite all I had accomplished
and I wondered how they could shake my hand at the end of each Mass
and let me go
at the same time
and all that I began to feel about their loving God
just disappeared.

Before I came here,
I had a waking dream where I saw stone balustrades
that overlooked a grove of olive trees
and I climbed a spiral stone stairwell.
The first day I came to the Convent, I climbed
a stone spiral stairwell, the same stairwell I climbed in my dream.

This morning,
the entire Middle School went to prayer.
I remained on the 4th floor,
using the copy machine in the teacher's lounge.
I looked at the screen saver of the French teacher
who had gone downstairs.
As I looked on the pictures of her 6th grade homeroom girls
at a birthday party, out in the country on a field trip,
I thought to myself,
I did that.
I set up those changing pictures of her girls
and the sun at 9:30 came streaming in from the east
through the ancient lead-lined windows
even though the glass was dirty with the dirt of the ages.