after Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats
May you be ripened to the world
every day like the thimbleberries—
slow-opening, face up, to welcome
wind and rain.
May you be patient like the bee napping,
swaying on a stalk of fireweed towering over
the berry bushes, drunk with flower-scent,
folding your papery wings against your body.
May you be in harmony with all manner
of dozing bees and sun brushed berries,
like a juicy thimble on thumb, sweet on tongue.
May what’s left of your years be sowed with
hundreds of berry seeds, filling bellies
of birds and deer.
May this moment that is entering you now,
cloud-drifted, like a swish of insect past your ear,
be a pluck of delight, a rubus blood kiss,
so this moment will someday love you back
in a rain-pelted, dark-windowed night—
may you remember this.
—
Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised on the island of Kaachx̱ana.áakʼw, Wrangell, Alaska, in the Alexander Archipelago. She lives and writes in Lingít Aaní at Mickey’s Fishcamp. She’s a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi and founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQIA group on the island. She currently mentors writers through two Alaskan writers’ groups: Blue Canoe Writers and the Drumlin Poets. She’s the author of several poetry books, a collection of short stories, and a foodoir.
