A Cistercian Sister

On the circumference of a cistern
A Cistercian sister sits.
She’s cheerfully chewing chokecherries
And spitting out the pits.

On a stringed Celtic cittern
She assiduously strums
Whilst wistfully she wishes
That the chokecherries were plums.

She’s schlepped out to the cistern
From her Cistercian cloister,
Where the sisters step in silence,
Not a whisper nor a roister.

Taciturnity disgusts her,
So she’s clambered through the brambles--
Now she looks a tattered slattern,
Her skirts a shameful shambles.

Fifteen ferrous frets she fingers
And so stridently she sings
That the bitterns flee her cittern,
Wrens and warblers take their wings.

Any humans within hearing
Would certainly have hissed her,
This Cistercian cistern-sitting
Celtic cittern-strumming sister.

Suddenly she ceases singing
And she gasps in consternation:
A chokecherry she was chewing
Has fulfilled its appellation.

Were the cloister somewhat closer,
Then those nuns who won’t palaver
Might hear two successive splashes:
Chordophone and then cadaver.

This unfortunate, stentorian,
Chokecherry-chewing sister
Sinks with her cittern in the cistern
With no one to assist her.

So mind the maestro’s maxim:
It’s unbearably uncouth
To sing, in choir or solo,
With something in your mouth.