Nearly every morning, from midnight to 2 a.m., poet/author Tom Sheehan, halfway into his 93rd year, sits at the kitchen table in his historic Central Avenue home, cracks open a beer, and writes. It’s the optimum time for words, imagery and memories to flow from his brain to the keyboard, he says.
He’s kept these unholy hours for decades.
“My mother said his typewriter and computer were his girlfriends,” said youngest son Jamie, with a smile. Beth Sheehan died 10 years ago. Jamie lives with his dad these days, helping out as needed. Daughter Betsy and family are just down the road in East Saugus. Son Matthew and family are in North Carolina.
“I’ve modernized,” said Tom. “The old Royal typewriter is history; this is my third laptop. But I still type like this,” he said, glancing at his index fingers and poking fun at his hunt-and-peck style.
Sheehan, relaxing on the back porch of his 1742 home, is all smiles this day, even though that smile is hidden by a mask. He just got good news. His new book, Fables, Fairy Stories, Folk Lore and Fantasies, has been accepted for publication by Taj Mahal Review Co. of Allahabad, India. It is his 50th book.
Having a foreign publisher is nothing new. Sheehan has more than 140 works on the Literally Stories site in England, and 100 in Ireland’s The Linnet’s Wings. In addition, he has more than 700 western stories on Rope and Wire Magazine in Oregon. Many of his books are listed on the Amazon Author Page, “Tom Sheehan Saugus, MA,” as there are two Sheehans listed.
Sheehan’s other books include Small Victories for the Soul, In the Garden of Long Shadows, The Great Stand-off at Darby’s Creek, and Jock Poems and Reflections for Proper Bostonians. He was co-editor with the late John Burns of two sold-out books about Saugus, A Gathering of Memories and Of Time and the River.
There is an 84-page list of his published works on his newfangled laptop.
“My grandmother lived in that house next door. She was a book binder and always brought a reject from the line home. We had a library of books without covers. My sister Pat and I read Shakespeare in the first grade. I didn’t understand it all, but the imagery. Dynamite!” said Sheehan, a 1947 graduate of Saugus High School and a 1956 graduate of Boston College after military service in Korea.
Two weeks after returning from Korea, Sheehan was sitting in a freshman class at BC. “The professor assigned us the writing of 20 pages every week. ‘I’ll read the best three every week,’ he said. Every week he read one of mine.” Toward the end of the semester, the professor handed Sheehan the poem “Shot Down at Night” by John Frederick Nims and smiled.
Sheehan looks toward the heavens and recites the poem in its entirety:
“A boy I once knew, arm’s gold as saddle leather, lake blue eyes, found in foreign sky, extravagant death.
“Dreamy in school, parsed tragic Phaeton heard of war, arose surprised, gravely shook hands, and left us.
“His name, once grey, in convent writing, neat on themes, cut like erosion of fire the peaks of heaven.
“The Arab saw strange flotsam fall; the baseball-sounding spring, the summer roadster pennoned with bright hair, the Halloween dance, the skaters’ kiss at midnight on carillons of ice.”
“At that moment I did a 180 with my writing. It hit me,” Sheehan said. “My father told me ‘You come with two things: love and energy … and you better use them up.’ “
Tom Sheehan listened.
Tom and son Jamie share a similar bond. They watch cowboy movies and sports together. Tom loves sports. He was quite an athlete at Saugus High, a 145-pound quarterback who guided the Sachems past Harry Agganis’ Classical High squad his junior year.
“Jamie can do anything. He’s a carpenter, a great cook, a great driver. … He drove me to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Louisa May Alcott’s grave. Talk about vibes.”
Sheehan pauses. You can feel the wheels turning. “There’s a poem in there,” he said.
Maybe that poem will turn up in his 51st book.
