Dear Mother,

Your early lessons got me to bear the fearful sounds 
that faith can make while clearing its throat. I remember

the hard man who reaped our purpling timothy-grass 
each spring unbuttoning his tanned jacket to show

a gray kitten, gunky-eyed and nestled against fleece lining. 
I remember reaching with hesitation while saying

her new name. As she grew into cat, I have no memory 
of feeling her claws. Maybe that was when I started

begging to keep buried in me what can hurt? I would never 
see her outdoors again, but she must have answered

the barn cats singing to her readiness for life. You gave me 
the word pregnant and a story for the act on its way.

I remember it was night. I remember trusting your insistence 
to leave her alone to the body-work as we prepared

a toweled box in the nearby privacy of the closet. 
You drifted toward sleep, and I forget how many times I rose

and returned her to that darkness before submitting 
to her urge to burrow beneath the low canopy my knees

were making of my blankets. In bed with this restless wonder, 
I heard a sound I knew but not, because it seemed to come

from some strange shore I couldn’t find. Until I could: 
the mewing blindness of her first kitten’s head transforming

the old boundary of her body. I cried out, certain she was 
becoming my failure to keep her locked inside the charged dark,

my betrayal breaking her into something, I still don’t 
have the words. Without language or understanding, I’d made

a hideous world. I was hideous and crying— 
then the warm safety of your hush was suddenly there,

softening the cave of uncertainty at my ear, 
leading me back into my chance to see I would survive

looking a blessing in its full face before believing 
I deserved the voice of light.