Vista • Summer 2010 • Volume 15 • Number 1

The Poet Within

Bianca Young ’11 | Poet

Holland Glen
By Bianca Young ’11

I should let the water beat me smooth
and touch me falling. The rocks here morph
into mossy tablets in this river stream and never stop.

I should let the water change me and make my body
wear a coat as brown and deep
as the colors that breathe here do.

It’s simple.
colors breathe. I think they do.

Otherwise the dark earth beneath the leaves
would fade away.

How would I see the specks of green
behind the foaming streams of water cascading
down the rocky precipice if colors did not breathe?

The tree branch submerged in stream, alive
would surely drown, and fade away.

I should let the golden breath of sun,
inhale me through the green skin of the leaves
tickle my breathable, breathing tint,
my bark, my color,
my brown.

Now in its 87th year, the Annual Kathryn Irene Glascock ’22 Intercollegiate Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College connects talented student poets from all over the country with distinguished professional poets. Bianca Young ’11, an environmental studies major and lacrosse player from Montego Bay, Jamaica, was selected to represent Mount Holyoke at the 2010 Glascock Contest. How did she react when she found out she would be Mount Holyoke’s Glascock contestant? “[It] took me completely by surprise. As the competition approached, I was both excited and nervous,” Young said. “But I’ve written for so long, I felt confident about the poems.”

Mount Holyoke College • Vista