God, Like Me, a Mother

What moved me the most was a tiny hand,
like the claw of a cub, pawing at my
rib cage in time to the suckle of his lips.
This beautiful, wild person sustained
by milk drawn from unknown wells within me.
I remember nursing once in the basement
restroom of the zoo’s primate house.
The floor tile was cold — no other place to sit.

Before this, no one told me the pronoun
for Holy Spirit was not male in the original
languages and I don’t believe they hid this
from me but lacked the imagination to check.

Jesus says he wants to gather Jerusalem
to himself the way a hen shelters
chicks under her wings. And I’ve
been saved in that place even though
— at times — I was pressed up against it
so hard my lungs couldn’t completely
fill with a warm, oxygenated breath.