Wish by Caitlin Doyle

Wish
Caitlin Doyle

I told him I needed time—
he gave me a cuckoo clock

(I couldn’t work the winding key)

I told him I needed space—
he gave me a telescope

(or make the moon look back at me)

I told him I needed change—
he gave me a penny jar

(or stop from spending every cent)

I told him I needed more—
he led me to the well

(or count up every wish I’d spent)

Now I have so much time,
the cuckoo’s flown away

(the moon’s a clock that’s come unwound)

Now I have so much space,
it’s night for days on end

(the moon’s a shadow on the ground)

Now I have so much change,
the well’s just one more wish

(the moon’s a coin the well has drowned)

SELECTED BY ALICE WHITE

I discovered Caitlin Doyle’s poetry fifteen years ago when I saw her read at Housing Works Bookstore in New York City. Her reading took the top of my head off. I’ve followed her work ever since.

When I first read “Wish,” I knew it would go in the internal anthology of poems I’ve committed to memory, to carry always, to carry me. (I keep it between Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”)

“Wish” is a meticulously crafted, deceptively simple poem that feels like an incantation, a nursery rhyme, a riddle, a myth. Its well deepens with every read.

ABOUT ALICE WHITE

Alice White is an American poet living in Canada after a decade in France. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The Poetry Review, and The Threepenny Review, and has been featured on the podcast The Slowdown. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.