Margaret DeRitter

I Arrived at Her Door Through Providence

Overshot Route 3—broken phone, no navigation, missing signage.
By the time I reached Providence, I knew I’d gone too far,
so I old-schooled it to a gas station and asked for directions.

No one there knew her Cape Cod town. And, of course, no printed maps,
but a kindly clerk lent me a phone and handed me paper and pen.
An hour later I stood at her door, this woman I knew fifty years before.

Met her in an English class—me a closeted freshman, she a lovely
young teacher at our Christian school, married to a husband then,
living with a woman now and married once again.

Oh, the worlds we’ve left behind and so much doctrine too. And yet …
You arrived here through Providence, she says, hugging me on her porch.
And we both laugh—poetic souls who love the metaphor. And maybe,
somewhere in our heretic hearts, we believe it could be true.

Margaret DeRitter is the author of the full-length poetry collection Singing Back to the Sirens (Unsolicited Press, 2020) and the chapbook Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey, a winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and serves as copy editor and poetry editor of Encore, a regional feature magazine.