A Letter to Leah in England
Our purpose was simple: to open ourselves
as wide as the Utah sky, to learn the wild
bearing of the Colorado river, to remember
the divine flicker within each person, even
the ones we would not stop for on the road.
Each day before we crossed the next
vague boundary (taking turns at the wheel
of course), Hopkins or Oliver directed us
with a poem and we learned to go
slowly, to bow often,
even while doing 80 on the 40.
At the Grand Canyon we rushed to the edge
of the storm and let ourselves be drenched
in vastness. I can’t speak for you,
but my soul also yearns to be that big.
And now that you have splintered off
onto your own, as I suppose you must at 23,
I imagine you in green pastures with pewter skies still
pondering the grandeur of Hopkins’ god
and whether his charge still flickers.
Kristin George graduated this Spring from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California with a B.A. in English. She has previously published poems in Sage Trail, California Quarterly, and Mirrors Magazine.