But having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait
for it with persevering confidence.

—Romans 8:25

As for Powell on the Colorado,

relaxed at the tiller, sextant laid aside,

the canyon assembling the web of rivers

downward for as long as it takes

to cut to the root of the world,

the flow of the empty place consoles us,

attention awakens as we're slipping

down river at night. It's our work to wait

in this motion, faithful, alert, downstream.

We know faith comes from waiting. We wait

and we do not believe, or we believe

by a word made—God knows how—of words.

Hearing, we know there is farther to go.

Where the river bends and stretches our hope,

there is nothing but motion: the current

which seems to follow the canyon is sextant

and tiller, making and mapping, always

unseen, even to the root of the world.