A Poem in Dialog with Chouette

The world has done its work on me,

pressed its weight on my chest,

calling my wildness out.

We are wrong to expect

mothering from our mothers

And fathering from our fathers,

their feet netted by vines and roots,

their eyes, long ago, made useless.

What is it, then, that loved me?

That made me hold the wild in

like a young girl’s breath

when her head is underwater?

What is it that kept me screaming,

that knew not to give

all that was asked?

I have called it

Vision,

God,

Mother.

It is me,

the only part

born into the world

and not of it.