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Dead Reckoning

Posted in family, tagged , , , , , on May 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »

1949 Yearbook Staff, Women’s College of the University of North Carolina

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[ poetry by Hyejung Kook and Donna Masini from Poem-a-Day ]
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Dead Reckoning
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to estimate one’s position
without instruments
or celestial observations
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calculating direction and distance
traveled from the last known fix
while accounting for tides, currents, grief
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drift       numbness
sudden storms of pain
unexpected joy
 . 
to reckon is to believe
something true
to reckon with the dead
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is to believe I can know them
an airy thinness
gleaming
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despite
the distance
traveled
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I’d like to know how far
I’ve gone
how much farther there is
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to go       how absence
unfathomable
becomes
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something I can carry
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Hyejung Kook
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Copyright © 2024 by Hyejung Kook. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 16, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 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.
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Mother’s Day was this past Sunday, May 10. I unboxed my old digital picture frame, the thumb drive from September, 2024 still in place: Mom’s memorial service, two months after her death at age 96. I set it up on the bedside tray in Dad’s room at Chatham Nursing Center and he and I watched it through twice. Infant Mom on Grandma McBride’s lap. Tween Mom on her bike with favorite dog. Graduate Mom in mortarboard at Women’s College in Greensboro. Mother Mom holding my hand as I take my first steps.
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And happy, nutty, smiling Mom in all her favorite places with all her favorite people doing all her favorite things. Some of those things we engineered during her last year of life. I measured and helped her stir the batter but she rolled out the nutty fingers to bake. Mary Ellen scheduled the entire family for an afternoon of painting pictures of dogs, Mom’s favorite subject, and she the only true artist among us. And for her last Birthday that hat – knit Duke Blue Devil with protruding horns and eyes – she couldn’t quit laughing while she wore it.
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Absence unfathomable. I am carrying it.
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My Father Teaches Me to Play Solitaire
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by the window of his hospital room. So late in the day
and he won’t let us cheat. Cards slipping on his rickety tray,
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the orderly rows collapsing into one another,
his hand diminishing, he turns over the one card
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that won’t fit anywhere. We couldn’t finish.
Wait, I said, we’re almost done. He shook his head.
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Luck, chance. No skill involved. No will. No bluff. No time
to start a new game. I left my father waving in his window.
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Days later I bought a deck, shuffled the stiff cards, set them up
the way he’d shown me, and—beginner’s luck?—I won.
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Can you win a game you’ve played alone? No need to display
a poker face to yourself. No kidding, he said, I just won too.
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My father’s a joker. Bruno, our neighbor used to say,
you’re a card. So no surprise what he taught me:
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when you’re done you have nothing in your hand.
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Donna Masini
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Copyright © 2025 by Donna Masini. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. Donna Masini is the author of four poetry collections, and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Hunter College and lives in New York City. . 
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Dad didn’t need me to teach him how to play Rummikub, but at ninety-nine he is requiring a few more nudges and prompts. And he can still beat me. Sometimes.
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