blessing the boats lucille clifton meaning

Lucille Clifton’s poems find me at the right time, always. The poem I share today is eternal in the same way. That is how a thing becomes timeless, universal, how language learns immortality. Every poem that talks of the ordinary and the inconsequential, but with undivided attention, beams with a kind of detachment that allows the rays of its enigmatic knowledge to touch every other thing around it - so much so that the poem settles imperceptibly into every context its placed, every heart it touches. The truth is that any poet who’s seen, who knows the heart of things, allows that light to enter her words. I’ve shared these “soul poems” before - Everything is Waiting for you, The Journey, All you who sleep tonight, The Peace of Wild Things, Sitaaron se aagey jahaan aur bhi hain (to spotlight a few) - and these poems, I hope, become the luminiscent beads that glitter in a necklace of care. These poets who distil light from starburst, and teach words the secret language of kindness are no less than divine, and must be cherished with the silence of the sacred, of prayer. “Soul poems”, a special category that I repeatedly return to, come to readers at just the right time- poems of such simplicity, and disguised in such ordinary attire that one is surprised by the radiant light that suddenly streams through the seams. Poems come to us with a kind of astounding serendipity. I often read poetry, the way the pious read signs in nature and infer meaning or draw strength from them.

I accord it a place in my life that is beyond real things, experiences and implications. I’m superstitious about poetry, maybe even a bit foolishly religious.

Blessing the boats lucille clifton meaning