Review: “Crossing” by Ross White

Reviewed on 7/9/2025

★★★★★

The silent grief of Ross White’s “Crossing” is its most intensive emotional power. The first line writes, “I’m not the first man to lose his father.” The speaker grounds this extremely personal matter, his father’s diminishing cognition, in human universality. Death and loss, something that seems so grave and unspeakable, are only something so mundane and uncommon. It also speaks to the world’s indifference, that life always goes on. You are the only one capable of making sense of your own pain. 

White continues with the father’s separation from the son: “Does he see the story of his youth/ …unfurl like hieroglyphics along temple stone?” His lost liveliness freezes thoughts and memories. Towards one’s life’s end, we become a state of being, shrunken to a gravestone, a camera roll that can only be but not become. 

The poem shifts its reflections to the speaker himself — “I cannot/ find the gangplank I would use to board/ that ship.” White shows the paradox within human facility. As the alive, with all our powers, we can only witness our loved ones fade away. He also infuses the ordinary with quiet impact: “I feed him chicken and rice,/ rub lotion on his bruising limbs.” The speaker’s peaceful reactions exemplify our numb strength sailing with trauma. He can only witness and accept. Life, at this moment, is a “tide” rising and falling with its beautiful poignancy.

Full Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1668140/crossing