OctPoWriMo Day 20. Part Man, Part Fish (a blessing)

OctPoWriMo Day 20. Part Man Part Fish

The saying “actions speak louder than words” says a lot about human nature. We often act against our better judgement, act in ways that contradict our instincts and beliefs. Why do we do that? This is one of those mysteries in life that poetry explores.

Example Poem: Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection(Aal)

BLESSING THE BOATS

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

How does this poem evoke anxieties about water? Is this poem about sailing, or something else?

Prompt: Write a blessing poem.

Possible form: Loop poetry

~

[Before the poem, a quick take on Clifton’s “Blessing the Boats”: It’s a benediction that smuggles dread. The sea is framed as care (“carry you out”) but also as threshold: “the lip of our understanding,” “beyond the face of fear.” Water is both cradle and risk; the blessing asks for surrender to a force that can drown or deliver. It’s not really about sailing, I think. It’s about courage, release, and trusting motion when control is impossible. So, in my poem, there’s a blessing in that current leaning into a loop form, where each line’s last word starts the next, to mimic waves and human backsliding.]

Part Man, Part Fish (a blessing)

May your hands learn the weight of letting go—

go where the tide would carry, not command—

command nothing of the dark except a breath,

breath that remembers gills you do not have,

have mercy on the part of you that swims,

swims toward what glints, not what is safe,

safe being sometimes only a smaller cage,

cage that rattles when lightning finds the lake,

lake that keeps your secrets without judgment,

judgment soft as fog on a Sunday hull,

hull rocking less from fear than recognition,

recognition that your shadow is a kind of guide,

guide who knocks once—twice—under the boat,

boat holding while the old stories rise,

rise with the hunger you try to out-argue,

argue less; listen more for the plankton glow,

glow that is work done by smaller lives,

lives that bless without asking your belief,

belief that actions can outsing your words,

words that will follow once you move,

move and let the water name you home—

home being wherever you surface whole.

May it be so. May it be so. May it be.

~ Oizys.