I Don't Have A Husband, I Have A Nutritionist

At a gathering last night this woman, Sue, quoted her husband,
so I said, "I don't have a husband, I have a nutritionist,"
and quoted her. Someone asked what you'd call a group of nutritionists,
and I said, not a flock or a horde,
and Michael suggested a "buzzkill of nutritionists"

and I'm sorry Lynda, I did not defend you or your venerable profession;
instead I told them counting sodium intake
was the newest torture you'd devised for me.
Oh, how we malign those we love!
I did not say your specialty is cancer and nutrition--

that would have shut them up--
and how you've helped me through a strange and difficult time.
Instead I laughed with the others when Dan brought up Michael Pollan,
whose book The Omnivore's Dilemma my nutritionist
and I actually read together. Inevitably, someone mentioned the French;

someone else spoke of the foolishness of needing professionals
to tell us how to eat. Forgive me, Lynda, I turned you
into a character, as Sue always does with her husband,
a man none of us has met, allegedly a curmudgeon and a clown,
and probably someone she can't live without.