Crossings

The word of the day is copacetic.

I see my brother and me packing suitcases for our trip.

…

On that gray day, you chopped the Steinway piano with an axe.

Surrounded by yellow and red leaves on the hard earth,

…

Today I saw a father and son stepping onto the crosswalk.

I braked and watched them pass. Son on father’s shoulders,

…

On our way to the dance, we made a fire under the bridge.

Snow fell heavily outside our place near the train tracks.

…

My only memory of you—in the dark hallway of your Boston house,

just off the sunny kitchen. I was two and you were sixty.

…

When Mom and I arrived, you hid the donut behind the picture.

You sat in the sunny kitchen, embarrassed you’d been caught with a sweet.

…

You sit in the corner, oblivious to the old teacher watching.

Too busy evading the eyes of “cool kids,” who gawk and giggle.

…

Colleagues ask for my criteria grading English papers.

Family asks me meanings of mystifying words.

…

I’m no longer desired.

I was once called handsome

…

When we were children,

we knelt after Communion

…

The twenty-something blonde offered

to lift my suitcase to the overhead compartment.

…

I was only twelve. You were thirty-four,

living in an apartment by Wollaston Beach.

…

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.

…

I miss the avocado rotary phone and its coiled cord,

the cadence of your speech and wandering words.

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The old man—

flaccid face, blue-water eyes,

…

He woke to the dog whimpering and scratching his arm.

The phone rang. His wife answered. “It’s for you.”

…

You know the meeting when a question asked

“makes someone feel bad,”

…

“Do you have Nana’s yellow teapot?” my mother said.

“Beth told me I gave you those pieces a long time ago.”

…

I’d like to be

the Wife of Bath’s scarlet stockings

…

Too old to put her shoes on, she watched me

place her feet into her favorite pair of Doctor Scholl’s.

…

She asks me to put bacitracin on her heel.

“Do you see a small cut?”

…

That fall day we raked leaves from behind the shed.

Smell of earth and wet decay rose in the cold air.

…

One day there is no news.

The anchors stare at empty teleprompters.

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Lions loll in the streets of Johannesburg,

a sleuth of bears rise on hind legs in Yosemite,

…

In the pew by the stained glass of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus,

I stare, enjoying its play of light—red, gold, and green illuminations.

…

Mornings I injected insulin into my dog

and made sure she had enough water.

…