My Mother Tries to Teach Me About Faith

Hannah Dow

1.

You begin with the story
of St. Eulalia, a girl not unlike me—
slow to speak and tortured
by her own convictions.
I tell you I would give anything
to summon a snowstorm
when I feel afraid or a dove
to fly from my mouth because
silence is never enough. 

2.

You begin with the story
of the disciples—how, when they felt
a heavy wind toss the water beneath
their boat, they called out
to Jesus to save them, but when
they saw him walking toward them
on the water, in their fear
they mistook him for a ghost.
I tell you a ghost comes to visit me
at night. A ghost whose name
sounds like birdsong, like the wind
when it turns itself over water. 

3. 

You begin with the story
of the mustard seed—how anyone
with just a speck of belief
could tell a mountain to move
and it would. I tell you
this is called fault-block—that
the mountains are moving all around us
whether we tell them to or not. 

4.

I begin this poem by mistyping
the word faith, which, without its last letter,
is fact. I have heard so many stories
that I have lost the fine thread
of Eulalia’s golden hair, the shadow
of the ghost, the single mustard seed
before it even has a chance
to slip through my fingers.

5.

I want to begin with the story
of yesterday—how I saw a western
grebe walk across a lake: silently,
with the confidence of a god who does
not believe in winter even as snow
began to fall around us like words
I could never summon on my own.