Crossings—The Complete Collection

For LOML—Always.

For my family—

those who remain

and those who have passed

into the other room.

Dad—You stood in doorways asking

if everything was copacetic.

It wasn’t always, but your asking

made it so. You taught me that integrity,

acceptance of human frailties,

and generosity to others

should be our valued aspirations—

I try.

Mark—Together with friends under the bridge,

the warmth of your arm around my shoulder

was as comforting as your protective spirit—

I feel.

Helen—Your crooked toes from shoes

passed house to house,

your rosary and Daily Missal

that sit on my desk,

your accord with all that life brought,

your devotion to God—

I strive.

Mom—Your fingers touch the contours of my face.

You hope I’m happy. Not completely,

but your abounding optimism brings me closer.

The truth is in these poems—

I’m grateful.

For those who love me,

your words and gestures

are sacred—

I learn.

I see you now. I always did.

This book is my way of saying:

Everything is copacetic.

As copacetic as it gets.

Memory is an act of attention. We choose what to preserve,

which words to carry forward,

which silences to honor.

In this collection of poetry, I return to thresholds—

doorways where my father asked, “Everything copacetic?”

Near a fire under a bridge, when my brother hugged my shoulder,

in a hallway where my grandfather touched my head,

by the hospital bed where a face I knew would soon be gone.

I write about an Irish American family across generations—

men who couldn’t cry, women who worked until their feet hurt,

children who waited for words that never came.

But love was always there.

Many of these poems were inspired

by epiphanic moments in the presence of those I love.

My family members are my prayers.

My poems are my prayers.

My family members are my poems.

My brother and I are packing for a trip.

My father stands in the doorway.

“Everything copacetic?” he says.

Once, I asked him where he learned that word.

“Korea,” he said, “a Marine word.”

Years later, in the hospital,

the Jell-O quivered on the spoon.

“Don’t want it.”

“You’ve got to eat, Dad.”

“I’m not hungry.” He pushed it away.

I sat by him until shadows

crossed his face. Mostly, he slept.

Sometimes he asked the time.

I left at nine. Soon, the nurse called.

“Your father’s agitated. He wants to leave—

something about a trip.”

When I returned, he stood at the window,

wearing the robe my sister said

brought out the blue in his eyes.

“Everything copacetic?” I asked.

He turned. Looked at me. “It was tough,” he said.

I guided him to the bed and slept in the chair beside him.

By dawn, he’d gone.

His robe, folded,

on the table by the door.

That gray day, you took an axe to the Steinway.

Yellow and red leaves scattered as you raised your arm,

smashed the instrument apart on the hard earth.

You shattered the shiny veneer—

wooden ribs, dovetail joints,

padded hammers, strings.

Split the spruce soundboard heart

as small planks of air-dried wood

joined the miscellany on the ground.

I thought of my mother,

the day she moved out,

how you changed the locks,

emptied closets,

erased every vestige of your shared life—

glistening strings

on the soundboard

of a broken heart.

Why never the swings?

Today, I saw a father and son

step onto the crosswalk.

I braked and watched them pass—

the boy on his father’s shoulders,

headed to the park.

Once, we built a shed together.

Years later, at a family party,

I heard you say,

“Remember when Danny and I built the shed?”

But it wasn’t my brother who cut wood

and hammered nails with you.

I was bothered just a bit.

I had other memories—

your help knotting my tie.

We looked in the mirror.

My face reflected in yours.

You patted my shoulders.

Someone crossed the room

and took a picture.

It was on the table by your casket.

Your hands on my shoulders.

One moment, framed.

On our way to the dance,

we built a fire on tracks beneath the bridge.

Snow fell in the distance.

We sang about one hundred bottles,

lifting our Budweisers with gloved hands.

Your arm on my shoulder,

your face orange from flames.

Twigs crackled, embers rose in smoke-filled wind.

Streetlights flashed on icy rails

and the sleepers covered by earth.

Soon, we’d leave this tunnel,

step into the whiteness beyond.

I loved the circle of flickering flames and logs.

Sometimes in the blackness of my room,

a fire blazes.

I see our faces.

Hear our voices.

Feel the chilling wind,

the warmth of your arm

protecting my skin.

I wish we’d stayed,

never stepped into the snowy light.

Our time together—

perpetually that night.

My only memory of you—

in the dark hallway of your Boston home,

just off the sunny kitchen.

I was two, you were sixty.

Tall and thin, wispy silver hair,

blue eyes lit by a slant of kitchen sun.

“You don’t know me?” You smiled.

I couldn’t speak, but I understood

as you rubbed my head,

then walked down the shellacked hallway.

You died in your sleep a few years later—

years of hard work behind you:

gravedigger by day,

hauling bags of mail onto trains at night,

raising five children.

Whenever you sat in your parlor chair,

Sleep came.

Close to your age now,

I visit your homestead in Ireland.

Cars pass where a dirt road once lay.

No one lives in the tiny stone house.

Birdsong.

Smell of cut grass.

Sheep amble through the fields.

The sun moves into clouds,

then brightness returns.

What were you thinking as you exited this door?

What conflicts stirred in your mind?

Twenty-one years old, off to America,

leaving nine siblings and parents behind.

From Athlone on the Shannon River,

dead center of Ireland—

you walked, somehow reaching Southampton,

where you boarded the Adriatic,

a name that means, “dark city.”

You carried courage, a dream,

a canvas sack, your mother’s Bible.

Hardly any money.

I press my palm against the homestead wall,

as you touched my head so many years ago.

I see you move from darkness into light.

When Mom and I arrived,

you hid a donut behind the frame.

I stared at an old photograph,

gray-yellow as your skin.

A girl waded in an ocean

close to the shore.

“That’s me,” you said,

pointing to your young self

in a bathing suit like a dress,

swimming toward a boulder

battered by foam.

I bent closer,

smelled the sour salt of your soft skin.

“Did you climb the rock?

Was it scary in those big waves?”

My mother moved around us,

dishes clinked in the sink,

water spilled like Assaragh Falls,

tumbling over rocks.

Tears fell, salting her pink cheeks.

She wiped them with blanched, cracked hands.

You laughed,

cupped your face with a hand.

“I was gathering food—

sea lettuce, vivid green,

soft as silk we’d never own.

Our hunger,

the stones we carried—

but Brigid’s rock downshore

gave back green silk we could eat.”

“Time for your bath,”

Mom said. “Help Nana

stand. Don’t let her slip.”

I wrapped my arm around her,

holding fast.

Her breath, a waft of salt air.

“Up we go. On the count of three.”

Mom embraced her too.

At the bathroom door,

my mother told me to leave,

recite my prayers

in Grandpa’s chair,

where he prayed

for years.

“That was Clew Bay in County Mayo,”

Nana called out.

I listened beside the bathroom door.

My mother scolded Nana about her diet

and hidden donut.

Nana said nothing.

Behind the door,

bathwater swayed,

Clew Bay in an old white tub,

Brigid’s rock gleamed

in sour-salted steam.

I sat in Grandpa’s chair,

reciting verses from his

worn book of prayers.

Salt smell suffused the room,

and hazy darkness draped me.

You sit in the corner,

oblivious to the old teacher watching—

too busy evading the eyes

of “cool kids” who gawk and giggle.

You feel pain when they whisper

each time they walk by.

Peering down,

you press your palm on a page

you’re not reading.

Lines of Coleridge or Keats—

words you love

when left alone.

You feel distracted,

sad like the speaker in Keats’ Ode,

longing for “songs of spring,”

wanting to be invisible,

feeling unlikable,

trivial.

Why would anyone care

to talk with me? you think.

Someday, when you’re reading

the rhythms you adore,

I hope you find this poem

by a gray-haired teacher

you inspired.

He admired you—

your devotion to words,

your quiet brilliance.

Know this:

You were never insignificant.

Those cool kids were simply silly.

And you mattered to him.

Colleagues ask for my criteria

when grading English papers.

Family members want the meanings

of mystifying words.

Students praise my speaking skills

and assume I am smart.

My erudition impresses them—

then they walk away.

Nights, I scour Shakespeare,

wander the web,

lauding lines of literature,

commending clever craft—

focused yet saddened,

longing to be liked,

to feel significant to someone,

distinct like a Dickinson dash.

Mostly,

I feel small—

a tiny font,

the blank space beyond a colon,

an abandoned thought.

A letter lacking closure,

or a line—

stranded and incomplete.

Preceding naught.

During class

Mary complained,

“Professor, reading about

a slave whipped and abused

makes me feel bad.”

David, by the door, added,

“Why do we read

about slaves’

horrid lives?

It’s just too sad?”

Others nodded,

moved anxiously.

The word “triggered” lingered

in the air. Someone argued,

“But we really should care.”

When class ended

I studied the image—

“The Scourged Back”

of an American slave.

“Gordon” or “Peter.”

Historians are uncertain

of his name. Was he

married? Children?

What was his age?

History confines him

to a picture on a page,

the photo of his keloids,

the record of his life.

Did the photographer

ask about Gordon/Peter’s life,

or how he survived the eighty-mile chase?

How did he find the strength and faith?

Escaping a plantation,

bloodhounds at bay,

onions to smother

the scent of his

dripping sweat

the entire way.

And the pain

of whip wounds

still wet.

Tattered clothes,

scratched

and bug-bitten

face.

Running

through

thickets,

thorns,

and mud.

Hungry,

tired, terrified,

until he arrived,

exhausted at Union lines.

Had he sat in class,

would Mary plead—

“You hurt my eyes.

Could you please leave?

Your story is so sad.

It makes my heart bleed.”

Lions prowl the streets of Johannesburg,

a sleuth of bears rise on hind legs in Yosemite,

wild boars advance through the city of Haifa,

crocodiles surf waves in La Ventanilla, Mexico,

penguins parade the streets of Cape Town,

mountain goats march past shops in Wales,

scurries of squirrels spring freely in a Santa Monica park,

flocks of birds cry out, a chorus begins.

“Free at last, free at last,” we say behind our masks,

inspired by their joy, humbled by their presence,

sad it took a plague for us to see.

One day there is no news.

The anchors stare at empty teleprompters.

Eyes wide and twitching, lips quivering,

they look into the camera.

We change channels.

See black screens or people scrambling on sets,

passing blank papers, whispering.

We can’t hear what they say, and we do not care.

We are too tired and drained to move.

Through the living room windows—trees and sky.

The wind blows and birds fly.

Somewhere snow falls and thunder booms.

But not here. There is no weather.

No drama, conflict, or story.

No wars, crimes, or political crises,

no empty talk, no sound and fury.

In a forest, sitting on a sycamore,

Thoreau’s wood thrush sings.

Deep in a dark sea cave, the red drum knocks.

Somewhere—a judge’s ruling:

this session’s end.

I’m no longer desired.

I was once called handsome

but now I’m invisible.

People avert their eyes

if they see me coming.

Just a strange old man

with a barnacled hollow face.

I enjoyed my beauty once,

when everything felt new.

Now, I wade in different waters—

a more pacific stage of life.

Mostly, I sit,

recalling places I’ve been,

people I’ve known,

many now gone.

Loneliness increases;

memories of faces decline.

I know uncertainty

is the keel of life—

guiding our illusion

of control.

Better to submerge

in a sacred stillness

beyond unfathomed questions,

the haze of thoughts.

Enjoy instead the flow of repose.

Accept the softening of cognition,

like birds growing smaller

as they fly toward distant lands—

reminders of our passage

to another realm where some say

eternal happiness abounds.

Or maybe it’s a bluff of nothingness,

a shadowed, fraudulent shore,

where existence

endures no more.

When we were children,

we knelt after Communion

in a church that smelled

of stone, incense, and shellac.

I wondered what you prayed for,

as you bowed your head upon the pew.

What secrets did you know?

I admired your certainty,

quiet strength.

I wished you’d talked more.

Years later, you picked me up from the airport

and asked how I’d been.

I told you about my life,

my worry for a sick friend.

I saw sadness in your profile,

thought you’d offer advice,

but you simply looked at me

and crossed yourself

in the dashboard light.

Communion—

the road we share,

as when you traced the cross

and turned to me

with a soft and caring glance.

The twenty-something blonde offered

to lift my suitcase to the overhead compartment.

My principal inquired, “When will you be retiring?”

My neighbor, close in years, has cancer.

When the young woman looked at me

and offered to take my luggage,

I thought of rites-of-passage—

a first kiss, the first date,

marriage and a child,

and the Last Rites, too.

The plane rose through clouds.

Turbulence. Rain-pattered darkness.

I saw an old man

in the window’s reflection.

Behind: everything lived.

Ahead: the solid blackness.

When we landed,

the suitcase seemed heavier.

My exit was clear.

I was twelve.

You were thirty-four,

living in an apartment by Wollaston Beach.

On your porch, we loved to watch

waves crash on the soft, pebbled shore.

Once, you showed me a painting—

a gyre of blue-green shapes.

A black stroke, apostrophe-shaped, stood out.

“That’s me lost in a crowd.” You laughed.

I thought the painting was the ocean.

You, the apostrophe,

tumbling headfirst toward the shore.

I saw no crowd. Only waves—

and you, curved like a question mark,

diving toward the shore.

I don’t like contractions—

something is removed. Ellipses bother too.

When I’m somber,

these simple marks

usher the memories

of Dad and brother Mark,

and my fear of losing you returns.

Now you’re eighty-one,

and I’m fifty-nine.

I wish I could enter the past,

change the apostrophe

to an exclamation.

No—my heart.

A steady pulse in the light.

Beating like the waves,

green and blue,

assuring you with their rhythm—

You were not lost,

just part of the current

carrying you safely home.

I imagine you looking at the robins’ nest

in the maple outside your bedroom window.

You can’t see the blue eggs,

but you watch the male bring his partner dry grass and twigs.

He offers dirt, dipped in a birdbath

or gathered at the yard’s edge.

The female smooths and seals the nest,

protecting her brood of four or five.

Sometimes you stare at your body cast—

a remnant of your spinal surgery—

but most hours you watch the tree,

the birds,

the clouds,

the sky.

The days pass slowly,

yet after two weeks

you see tips of yellow mouths,

like tulips or other flowers

you would smell in the lawn beyond.

You imagine the day

your hardened mold cracks open,

and you walk outside again—

how you’ll look upward, smiling,

searching the blue, hoping to glimpse a fledgling

or any free bird

flying far across the sky.

I miss the avocado-green rotary phone

and its coiled cord,

the cadence of your speech,

your wandering words.

We talked of trivialities—

our jobs, our foolish acts,

complaints of coworkers,

disappointments,

dreams.

Even pauses pleased me—

our breathing replaced

when voices halted,

like the chirping

of sparrows at dusk.

Our talks comforted me.

I’m sad at their end.

Now you text—

“Thinking of you,”

with a random photo.

I reply, “Thinking of you, too.”

Thoughts of you—

mist fading in snowy air.

I no longer know you

as I once did.

I long to hear your voice

when my iPhone’s old bell rings.

The old man on the dock—

weathered face,

capillaries like tributaries

on dry land.

His belly smooth as stone,

ankles swollen purple,

skin rippled like water.

He bends,

cupping his hands

toward the lake below,

reaching for water

that will not rise.

The phone’s ring slices the dark.

His wife, voice flat: “It’s for you.”

“My father’s dead. Can you shine my shoes?”

Downstairs, something crashed.

They walked in silence

because that’s what he liked.

In the living room,

the cheap print of The Last Supper

lay on the floor,

its frame splintered.

At the wake, he knelt

beside his father’s casket,

said an Our Father

kissed his Pa’s forehead.

Leaving, he asked his wife

when they’d last seen him.

“Just before Easter.

We took him out to dinner.”

At home, he knelt

beside the shattered print.

His shoulders drooped,

his back shook.

She knew he was thinking

of that last supper—

what he said,

what he wished he had said.

She watched,

offering silence,

offering time.

Later, she would hug him,

and she wouldn’t say a thing.

“My sister Ag was always

smarter than me,” she said.

“You’re smart like her.

I know you’re gonna get

a lot of degrees.”

She looked at leaves

falling outside the window.

Lost in thought,

she traced the cross

on my forehead.

“If I didn’t have my

prayers, I don’t know

where I’d be. They’re

mostly all I read.”

As a young girl,

my grandmother knelt each morning,

said her rosary,

then stepped across a broken-planked porch

and walked a mile to a well,

clutching a wooden pail.

Coming home, she stepped around stones

that stabbed and blackened her feet.

Once I said, “That must have been hard.”

She paused—

“Sometimes it was,

but I was so glad to have my mother and siblings.

After my father died,

my mother Josephine cleaned for the rich.

Storefront windows read ‘No Irish Need Apply.’”

Nana crouched,

looked into my eyes.

“Jimmy, your sadness

for the people you loved never ends.

The pain is a bit less each year.

But you always feel the ache.”

Still, she prays by a great oak

along a path walked many years ago.

She whispers blessings

beneath a canopy of light and wind.

Onward she moves,

delighted by birds trilling,

the small music of all her mornings.

“Do you have the yellow teapot?” my mother asked.

“Beth told me I promised it to you long ago.”

I searched cabinets, closets, every shelf—

never found that gold-trimmed porcelain,

part of the china we used on Christmas Day,

set on the mahogany table with several desserts—

apple, blueberry, pumpkin pies,

all that food.

My brothers and sister gathered,

parents at each end.

Streisand’s album played softly

in the candlelit room.

Years later, I found the teapot.

I remembered the roast,

green beans, stuffing.

How Mike and I jested.

Beth complained a nun

mocked her purple tree.

Mark, red-faced, boasted

we ran from cops.

Dan eyed the clock.

Mom repeated,

“Doesn’t anyone want more?”

Dad listened, eyes agleam,

as Streisand’s voice grew

soft and the music hushed.

I’d like to be

the Wife of Bath’s scarlet stockings

poor Yorick’s skull

Dickinson’s sherry in the glass

Gatsby’s dock

Hulga’s wooden leg

a flattened sneaker on some highway

a crushed beer can in a restaurant dumpster

a lost sock under a sagging couch

a rip in a screen

a penny on the walkway

a snail shell beneath a blackberry bush

a crow’s feather on a deck

a broken twig on a lawn

a puddle by a drain

or that dried leaf

you crumble in your hand.

Too old to put her shoes on, she watched me

slip her feet into Dr. Scholl’s.

“My toes are crooked. They must look funny to you.”

I smiled, trying to ease her embarrassment.

“My mother cleaned houses for the rich,” she said.

“We had to wear the shoes she brought home.

They were often small.

That’s why they look this way.

The toes, I mean.” She laughed.

“I know.” I pulled the second shoe over her heel.

She looked out the window.

Did she see her mother

hugging a bag of discarded shoes

as she walked down the street,

shoulders curled in the wind?

My great-grandmother moving slowly,

dress worn and thin,

teary, smiling,

her bony hands holding a burlap bag—

used dresses and torn ribbons to adorn her children’s hair.

She asks me to put Bacitracin on her heel.

“Do you see a small cut?”

I nod and rub ointment against the crack.

Her feet are calloused and rough.

“That feels good,” she says.

I see a honeymoon picture on the table—

my parents young as children,

waving, bright eyes,

she resembles Elizabeth Taylor in a hat.

Both dressed in their best attire.

Joyful expressions—

laughter mixed with apprehension,

eyes bright and a little wet.

“What are you looking at?”

She turns her head.

“Oh that.”

I rub Aveeno on her feet.

She reclines in the chair,

closing her eyes,

smiling at the memory.

The room darkens.

Rain taps a pane.

Thunder booms.

I think of how far these feet have walked,

the tenderness at the bottom of her sole.

Kneeling, I’m thankful to ease one hurt.

Her chest rises and falls. Soon she sleeps.

Someday later,

I’ll hold the photo,

remember this night—

the rain,

her tired face

and hurt feet.

My mother will be waving to me.

I’ll see her eyes,

recall her pain,

and feel her hand in mine.

That fall day, we raked leaves behind the shed.

Smell of earth and wet decay rose in cold air.

We saw our breath in a blast of wind.

Worms and beetles scattered from the pile.

I saw dirt,

thought we had finished.

“Not yet,” you said.

The sky grew darker, wind colder.

Your flashlight showed not a speck of leaf.

You said, “We’re done.”

Today I kneel at your grave,

clearing wet leaves.

Again, I smell the earth,

feel the biting cold.

Leaves are blurry through my tears.

“We’re done,” you whisper in my ear.

I recite a prayer,

cross myself.

You’re no longer here.

I stand and leave.

In the pew by the stained glass

of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus,

I stare, enjoying the play of light—

red, gold, and green illuminations.

Jesus, a wooden cross covering

his cream tunic and carmine cape,

bends and speaks to Veronica,

a woman veiled in blue and white.

She holds a cloth to wipe his face.

What does Jesus say to her?

Thank you, I suppose.

The guard behind them watches.

Is he a sad witness?

Does he have doubts like me?

Perhaps he’s eager, as I am,

for enlightenment.

Or does he want to escape

the risen, searing Sun?

Each morning, I injected insulin into my dog,

made sure she had water.

Watching her wobble pained me.

Sometimes she collapsed on cold tile,

left lines of blood in the yard,

shouldered hard walls.

Soon she could no longer hold her urine.

I bought diapers that sagged and slipped off.

My mother said, “Can’t you put her to sleep?”

I said, “When you become incontinent,

should I do the same?”

“Guess not.” She laughed.

Eventually, I euthanized Ethel.

The girl at the desk said,

“Sorry for your loss.”

In the parking lot,

I leaned on the steering wheel

and cried.

My mother, eighty-two,

is losing her sight.

She listens to audiobooks.

Her body is laced with bars and bolts—

spine and leg remade in metal.

When I visit, she says,

“Move your chair close.”

Her fingers trace my face.

“How are things, my number three child? Are you happy?”

I pause too long. “All is good,” I lie.

We share a meal,

talk about the past,

watch the news together.

I watch the TV; she listens.

Light washes her face.

In time, my mother says,

“Is it late? You need rest.”

I tell her no. She wrings her hands.

“I enjoy your visits,

but they seem so short.”

We sit until her eyes close.

I touch her shoulder.

“Mom, time for bed,” I whisper.

I place my arm under hers.

She stands,

kisses my forehead.

When she dies,

I’ll see her walker

in the still apartment.

I’ll feel her fingers

softly trace my face

and hear her say,

“I love you, sweetheart.”

My mother asks if I’m happy. I hesitate,

then lie: “All is good.”

The truth lives in these poems—

in the space between what we say

and what we mean,

between presence and loss,

memory and forgetting.

When we express our feelings,

we discover meaning.

The people we have loved

are the substance of our life stories.

If we do not remember or reflect,

our lives are diminished.

If we are not true to who we are,

have we lived? (Carl Jung)

“Our lives begin to end the day

we become silent about things that matter”

(Martin Luther King).