Blessing the Boats Quotes

“wishes for sons

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

— Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats,” Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000. (BOA Editions Ltd. April 1, 2000)”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“when you lie awake in the evenings
counting your birthdays
turn the blood that clots on your tongue
into poems. poems.

from “The Message of Thelma Sayles”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“heaven

my brother is crouched at the edge
looking down
he has gathered a circle of cloudy
friends around him
and they are watching the world.

i can feel them there, i always could.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“hag riding

why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself near my heart

you have your own story
you know about the fears the tears
the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breasts
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely line
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“so far
i am the only animal.
i will keep the door unlocked
until something human comes.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“trying to understand this life

who did i fail, who
did i cease to protect
that i should wake each morning
facing the cold north?”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“you can trust me,
there is no planet stranger
than the one i'm from.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“what i can promise to be is water,
water plain and direct as Niagara.
unsparing of myself, unsparing of
the cliff i batter, but also unsparing
of you, tourist. the question for me is
how long can i cling to this edge?”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“brothers,
this big woman
carries much sweetness
in the folds of her flesh.
her hair
is white with wonderful.
she is
rounder than the moon
and far more faithful.
brothers,
who will hold her,
who will find her beautiful
if you do not?”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“to my last period

well, girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“my grandsons
spinning in their joy

universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“there is an amazon in us
she is the secret we do not
have to learn.
the strength that opens us
beyond ourselves.
birth is our birthright.
we smile our mysterious smile.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us, amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“from that garden,
through fields of lost
and found, to now, to here,
to grief for the upright
animal, to grief for the
horizontal world.

pause then for the human
animal in its coat
of many colors. pause
for the myth of america.
pause for the myth
of america.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“like my aunt timmie.
it was her iron,
or one like hers,
that smoothed the sheets
the master poet slept on.
home or hotel, what matters is
he lay himself down on her handiwork
and dreamed. she dreamed too, words:
some cherokee, some masai and some
huge and particular as hope.
if you had heard her
chanting as she ironed
you would understand form and line
and discipline and order and
america.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“after the cancer i was so grateful
to be alive. i am alive and furious.
Blessed be even this?”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“the woman who is over ninety
cries for her mother. if our dead
were here they would save us.

we are not supposed to hate
the dialysis unit. we are not
supposed to hate the universe.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“whatever slid into my mother's room that
late june night, tapping her great belly,
summoned me out roundheaded and unsmiling.
is this the moon, my father used to grin,
cradling me? it was the moon
but nobody knew it then.

the moon understands dark places.
the moon has secrets of her own.
she holds what light she can.”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

“it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
in pity.
another child has killed a child
and I catch myself relieved that they are
white and i might understand except
that i am tired of understanding”
― Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000