‘Grace Can Pour’: a poem from Asterion by Amy Crutchfield

‘Grace Can Pour’ is the first poem of Asterion (November 2026), Amy Crutchfield’s first collection since winning the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry with The Cyprian in 2024.

Grace Can Pour

into a person.
Athena does this to Odysseus
in Phaeacia, in Ithaca
but we do not need a goddess
for this to take place.
She only helps us understand

what is already within us.
I can pour grace
into you: make you taller, younger, more formidable.
See your hair, it flows down in curls like hyacinth petals.
The years of trial and shipwreck
I have wiped them away.