As You Were

1 Minute Read Time

To become a knot untied, a bowline cut,
           a sheepshank slithered from its shape.
                       To be unpolished brass, a deck unmopped,

a porthole fogging with the weather.
           To be unstriped at the shoulder. To be
                       a hand without salute, a body left in its unease.

To be unmustering, unstanding
           at attention. To be not as you were
                       for years. To be not hole or pit, not

maintenance, not snipe in coveralls, 
           unstained with engine grease. To be no
                       angle of attack. To be a missile aiming

nowhere but itself. To be sonar 
           pinging nothing, signal-jammed.
                       To be unwatered brown or blue.

To be breath unheld, unfloating
           in the sea. To be both naught and not, 
                       voyage without orders, no port of call.

To be unmapped, uncompassed,
           points unfixed, no stars to navigate,
                       and all the sky unglittering and blank.

Jehanne Dubrow

is the author of fifteen books, including most recently The Wounded Line: A Guide to Writing Poems of Trauma (University of New Mexico Press, 2025). Her next book of creative nonfiction, Frivolity: A Defense, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press later this year. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including New England Review, Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares. She is a Professor of Creative Writing and a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas.

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