Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha was born
with her name, and born again
as Catherine of Sienna, dark-eyed
saint of the world across the sea.
Father Claude said she was
the truest convert in Kanawake:
eyes burned with a passionate purity,
hands meek as any French lady.
She died as beautifully as the pale,
naked martyrs in Baroque paintings.
So Claude wrote.

Tekakwitha was born quietly,
so quietly that her mother, laboring
through the night to bring her
into the world, thought she was dead.
Slapped her, woke the girl just
as dawn came. Tekakwitha was one
of the first to learn French, but
moved as quietly through life
as the day she was born--watching,
listening. She chose the name
"Kateri," which came more naturally
to her Mohawk tongue than Catherine.
Symbols were easier to pronounce:
missionaries likened her to a lily.
Why? For her sun-browned skin and
smallpox scars? She was thin, to be sure,
and graceful. Lived her last years
between church and chamber, scarcely
speaking to those she passed. They said
afterwards that her skin
glowed like a holy one. And when
her eyes burned with fever,
she cried out for Christ,
not her mother. As if she had
already passed on to the other world.
Two days after Kateri died,
cousin Anastasia saw her standing
in the doorway, hand raised
as if waving good-bye. “Kateri!”
she cried, but Catherine faded into
the blue evening light. When Father
Claude heard, he said he’d always known
she was a saint. Never mind that Mohawk
ghosts always linger around the home
for a few days before drifting up
into the Milky Way. When she appeared
to Claude, it was at sunrise, she held
a cross, and lilies lay at her feet.
Behind her head an an embossed disk
hovered like a gold plate. It marked her
worth remembering in story,
song, and painting.

Many of us have two names. One comes
out of the womb with us; we choose
another when we've been around
long enough for the world
to touch us. Everything living
has a name: Maple trees are called Acer;
Birch, Betula. Ash are Fraxinus
and Willow, Salix. Catalpas are
the only ones that go by the name
they grew out of the ground knowing--
they're too outlandish to change,
with their leaves big as elephant
ears, foot-long pods dropping all
through August, and showy flowers.

We are all born with a name. We change it
when something sweeps through us like a
great wind--or marks us, making us
different than we were before. In old times,
maybe killing a buffalo; today, marrying
a kind man, or being adopted by new parents,
new country, new chance at life.

A wind swept through her when she
was young, and she embraced it in
her long limbs. Perhaps I am no one
to ask. But did Tekakwitha fade
to make room for the saint?

All I know is that there are
no catalpa tree converts.