The complete poemearlier and revised versions, in full
“Catherine,” revised as “We’d Scrape the Rocks”
When Mom and I arrived,
you hid the donut behind the picture frame.
You sat in the sunny kitchen, embarrassed
to be caught with a sweet.
My mother tsk-tsked, shook her head.
I stared at the old photograph—
gray and yellowed as your sagging skin.
A girl waded in the ocean
not far from the shore.
“That’s me.” You said,
pointing to your former self,
in a bathing suit like a dress,
your body small against the dark water.
You swam toward a boulder
battered by foam.
I moved closer to look, and I smelled your sweat.
“Did you climb the rock when you reached it,
and was it scary in those big waves?”
My mother rummaged around us.
She put dishes in the sink and ran water.
You laughed,
hand cupping your cheek.
“I was gathering food—sea lettuce, we called it.
We’d scrape the rocks
and make stew.
’Twas most of the food we had,
but all we needed.”
You paused,
living in a memory
only you could enter.
My mother’s voice brought you back.
“Time for your bath. Jimmy, help your grandmother.”
She touched your knee.
I wrapped my arm around you.
“Up you go. On the count of three,” she said.
At the bathroom door,
she told me she’d take it from there
and asked me to wait in the living room.
“That was Clew Bay in County Mayo,”
you called out.
As warm water eased over your skin,
I listened—
my mother scolded you:
your diabetes, donut,
and denial.
Silent, except for sighs
as she sponged your back,
you swam again—
over 29,000 miles away.
Cold waves struck your skin,
but the sweet memory of the sea
was all you needed.
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.
Earlier text from the earlier reading copy of Crossings on this site. Revised text from Crossings.
“I was gathering food—sea lettuce, we called it.
We’d scrape the rocks
and make stew.
’Twas most of the food we had,
but all we needed.”
“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.”
Cold waves struck your skin,
but the sweet memory of the sea
was all you needed.
I sat in Grandpa’s chair,
reciting verses from his
worn book of prayers.
Salt smell suffused the room,
and hazy darkness draped me.
The grandmother’s line “We’d scrape the rocks” disappears from the body of the revised poem and becomes its title. The phrase now stands over the whole poem, while the grandmother’s speech grows fuller: the sea lettuce is “soft as silk we’d never own,” and Brigid’s rock “gave back green silk we could eat.” Hunger and gift sit together in one image.
The ending moves from the grandmother’s mind to the boy’s chair. “The sweet memory of the sea / was all you needed” tells us what she feels; the revision gives the bath back to her privately, behind a door, as “Clew Bay in an old white tub,” and leaves the boy outside with his grandfather’s prayer book and the smell of salt. The poem also shifts from addressing her as “you” to naming her “Nana,” a small change of distance that lets the closing scene belong to the grandson who remembers it.
A suggestion. Lines cut from a draft are sometimes worth a second look. One of them might serve as a title.