Poetic response to the “Beginnings” prompt:
Maybe
After Lucille Clifton
My life is a loaf of challah
braided with desire
meant to feed the hungry needs
of my younger years.
Now that I’ve climbed
higher, still alive but hungry
for less of everything, maybe
I’ll be content to live
as fishermen do –
devoted to learning water’s
unpredictable ways, making a life
while watching the sunset,
even in a storm where the fish sink
to the bottom, where the waves find
more tranquility, less
to be hungry for.
The first line (actually, the first 3 lines) of Lucille Clifton’s poem, “Won’t You Celebrate with Me” gave me an instant image of my own life as a braided loaf of challah, and the associations of bread with hunger – but in my own life, a hunger took the shape of desire. The last lines of Clifton’s poem were again a point of comparison – not with my life of relative safety, but with the life of fish, who must sink to the bottom to find more tranquil waters.
This poem took only a couple of revisions before it seemed complete. Although I didn’t keep her first line, I felt I should attribute the poem to Clifton and decided to use her lack of capitalization as a stylistic tribute to her as well. For me, Clifton as a poet combines pride with humility – a fierce combination – and the subject of both poems is a tribute to how one makes a life worth celebrating.
Maril Crabtree believes that a poem’s apothecary of words, of sounds spoken and absorbed, can be a healing force in our culture. Her book, Fireflies in the Gathering Dark, received a Kansas Notable Books award. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, Coal City Review, Persimmon Tree, Literary Mama, and Poet’s Market.
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