A Letter to Leah in England

                   Kristin George

 

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.

 

    

 

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