Dead Reckoning
to estimate one’s position
without instruments
or celestial observations
calculating direction and distance
traveled from the last known fix
while accounting for tides, currents, grief
drift numbness
sudden storms of pain
unexpected joy
to reckon is to believe
something true
to reckon with the dead
is to believe I can know them
an airy thinness
gleaming
despite
the distance
traveled
I’d like to know how far
I’ve gone
how much farther there is
to go how absence
unfathomable
becomes
something I can carry
Copyright © 2024 by Hyejung Kook. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 16, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Learning about dead reckoning, a navigation technique used to estimate one’s position at sea, I was struck by how perfect a metaphor it seemed to be for grief—the struggle to find one’s bearings, the ungrounded relativity of everything after someone dies. This poem began as a long sequence but arrived at this stripped-down form after fifteen years of off-and-on revision. It felt right [for it] to be nearly imageless, with the exception of ‘airy thinness,’ which comes from John Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.’”
—Hyejung Kook
Hyejung Kook
Hyejung Kook is a Korean American poet from Seoul. She received her BA from Harvard University and holds an MFA from New York University. A Fulbright and Kundiman Fellow, Kook lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.