It doesn’t matter what my mother says.
She could say anything at all.
Feeding the baby banana puree,
she offers another spoonful and says

        Remi loves her them nanners!
        Yes her do! Yes her do!
 
What matters is the tone.
What matters is that loving sound.
In my own forgotten beginning
she must have spoken to me in this way,
the way she singsongs everything
to my bald niece in her bumper seat.
 
        …and then we go to the choich
        and we sing for Jesus! Yes us do!
 
Before my teeth came in
she fed me and spoke to me
and all I could do was eat
and look up and smile
like Remi, whose face has broken
into a bananafied grin.
 
        …and Miss Linda play the pee-nanner!
        Yes her do! Yes her do!
 
I have heard many mothers
on return flights, or the cereal aisle,
soothe their little ones
in this very patois, their gazes longing
into the dimension beyond ours
that opens for mothers and children
and has now opened for me
hearing for the first time since
my own forgotten beginning
my mother’s motherspeak.
 
        …oh, it’s a rain falling out there!
        We got to take our umber-dellers!
 
How strange to return
to our first language, when all
our talk today is weather, work,
the weariness I always saw in her
and now I share a part in,
keeping it all together, trying
to keep it all from flying apart,
the office, the house, the heart of all.
 
        …and He walks with me
        and He talks with me…
 
Now she’s singing that other language
that nourished me when I was little,
the words of the green hymnal.

        …and He tells me I am His own…
 
Tomorrow I fly back.
When I return to them in autumn
Remi will crawl to my feet.
I will leave again and return
to find her running to crash
into my knees. And one day
I will return to hear her talk
about all the fascinating things:
the thousand-thousand bugs
that cover the screen door at night,
the frogs that hang out by the creek
that ripples with minnow and mudcat,
the visitations of the owl,
the brief, blessed glimpse of deer.
And if the natural order holds one day
Mom won’t be here.   
Nor any day thereafter.
 
One day I will have to tell Remi
about an afternoon she won’t remember.
How Mom fed her, speaking softly,
and I was there to hear again
the loving voice that I first thought
had left me, but now I know
is always there and always singing.
The lilt, the lift, the light of it
is the sound I hear in every downpour
of every lightless day—it’s the voice
that bids me rise and tells me
to believe. In the overwhelming no
that surrounds me she tells me yes.
 
        …and the joy we share
        as we tarry there…
 
I will have to tell Remi about this.
I don’t know when that will be.
I will have to wait for a time
when I can see that she’s struggling
to keep it all from flying apart,
to keep it all safe and close,
to keep it all safe in the heart of all.

Kevin Cutrer is the author of the chapbook Mudança (Dos Madres, 2019), in which this poem appears, and the full length collection Lord's Own Anointed (Dos Madres, 2015).  Born and raised in Southeastern Louisiana, he taught English in Northeastern Brazil, and now lives in Boston. His poems and reviews have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, The Raintown Review, Literary Matters, Panorama: the Journal of Intelligent Travel, and Poetry Daily.  He frequently reads in venues across Boston, Cambridge, and New York, and is the co-host of Works Cited: a Podcast about Poems. For more information about his work, visit kevincutrer.com.