Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936....
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou
The Boat-Header
by Henri Cole
The Heart of a Woman
by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Poems for Times of Turmoil
4/30/92 for rodney king
by Lucille Clifton
Chaplinesque
by Hart Crane
Fifteen Years of Darkness
by Liu Xiaobo
In a Country
by Larry Levis
O Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
O Me! O Life!
by Walt Whitman
Poet's Work
by Lorine Niedecker
Recession
by Sydney Lea
The Second Coming
by W. B. Yeats
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thing
by Rae Armantrout
Related Prose
Poems for Times of Turmoil
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

blessing the boats

 
by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

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






From Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2001 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with permission of BOA Editions Ltd. All rights reserved.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.