Sea-Change by Jehanne Dubrow

The Summer 2009 issue of Prairie Schooner included a poem by Jehanne Dubrow entitled “Sea-Change.” Dubrow’s poem was also featured by Poetry Daily on the Fourth of July that summer. On Independence Day in Lincoln, the city’s annual “Uncle Sam Jam” celebration was moved, for the first time, to a date other than the actual holiday. This was due to Nebraska’s own “Larry the Cable Guy” performing a Lincoln show on the Fourth. The rest of the summer was also a tad out of the ordinary; throughout the entire season, Nebraska’s temperature was cooler than average by about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, with a total of three record lows set in Lincoln.

by Tory Clower

Sea-Change

Jehanne Dubrow

Imagine this: saltwater scrubbing sand

into my husband’s skin,

his fingers pale anemones,
his hands 
turned coral reef, and in

his eyes the nacreous pearls of Ariel. 

This could be my husband, drowning in the swell.

A sea-change means a shift, a change of heart,

and how the oceans turn

glass shards into a jewel,
rip apart 
familiar things. Waves churn. 

The surf is a liquid body that peels 
a carrier from bow to stern, the keel

bent back, steel bands pliable as kelp. 

And long before I wake, 

the sailors drown. No point in calling help.

Each night, my husband shakes

me out of sleep. I cannot reach for him

or drag him to the surface so he’ll swim.