“To Virginia” by George Ella Lyon
If you knew
I sat
at your feet
I think you do know
If you’d seen me
retrace your steps
Hyde Park Gate where you were born
Gordon Square birthplace of Bloomsbury
Asheham now a cement works
Monks House last home
perhaps you did see
If you’d watched
your words
light my darkness
like the Milky Way
If you’d felt me
pouring over
leaning into
your diary
and To the Lighthouse
and Jacob’s Room
boarding an aeroplane
to cross the Atlantic
catching a train
from Paddington
to St Ives
to stay in the nursery
at Talland House
sacred site
of your childhood summers
before your mother’s death
slammed that gate
If you’d heard me
reading aloud your words
in that room where you drew
your baby breaths
and blew bubbles of words,
where you were translated by time
into a fierce, dreamy, always
ink-stained girl
would you have said
do you say
Welcome, daughter?
____________________
Share your response to this work, in any form, here
George Ella Lyon Artist Statement:
Though I write in many forms, I am first of all a poet; which means my job is to see and sing the connections between things. The spider’s web is a delicious image for this and for the wonder of something newly made from old patterns, like the sentences writers spin each day.
The strength of my web comes from family, friends, words, music, dreams, mountains, and the joy of making.
Think about the life you are spinning and how you could write about its different strands.
Kentucky Poet Laureate, George Ella Lyon is best known for her poem “Where I’m From.”
