Martha Waits

rosary curled like a snake
on the bedroom nightstand,
scapular pinned inside her bra,
no saint too good to invoke,
daughter Julia, a runaway. At fifteen,
Martha worked at Stangl’s bakery,
waiting on steel mill workers’ wives
who pointed fingers at Polish rye,
St. Martin’s croissants,
poppy seed rolls
handled with tissue paper,
nestled into white boxes
and tied in endless string
until cut with a dough scorer.
If her Julia only knew hard work,
the responsibility of a job,
the smell of baked sourdough,
the taste of vanilla donut custard
oozing onto a bare finger
Martha would lick off.
When no one looked
for Julia, gone seven years, now,
a twenty-three-year-old maybe
living in New York City,
Chicago, or Los Angeles,
or dead
and gone like the day-old bread
mothers lined up for at 5 a.m.
each waiting for something
that might or might not be there.