Category Archives: essay

2026, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, prose

The Fireman Reads Finnegan’s Wake: My end of the season, a dream of October and November, the squirrel and blue jay square off

What else could you possibly want?

My last cruise of the season was October 31st, 2026. As I write this, it’s Tuesday, November 3rd. Tomorrow is the day for my long anticipated (left) hip replacement surgery. Today is election day. These dates and details are signifiers of time passing in what seems to be a linear fashion. Before I sat down to write this, I was upstairs making a peanut butter and jam sandwich, watching a drama unfold on the bird feeder our housemate set up in the back yard next to the porch. 

It’s a simple feeder: a flat platform for bird seed and one for a shallow water bowl that hangs on a shepherd’s crook hook. It’s near that large holly tree that is too large and needs to be trimmed significantly down. One of the local squirrels has taken to basically treating the bird seat like an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, and a blue jay that takes up winter residence somewhere in the large holly tree that’s too large and needs to be cut down or on the back porch were having a loud discussion about which of them had rights to the bird seed. The blue jay, in the manner of nearly all blue jays, was vociferous in the assertion of its rights. The squirrel, confident in the manner of all critters sitting on top riches rightly acquired or not, appropriately shared or not, continued to eat his fill, occasionally looking at the blue jay and its aggressive squawkings as if slightly amused by the distraction. 

Are you not entertained? Are you not already sustained? Is it not enough that you can watch me feasting? What else could you possibly want? This is me imagining what the squirrel might be saying between cheekfuls to the blue jay. There was a time when the Gyspi, the old merled dog, could keep the commuting squirrels at bay; when she was a puppy her vertical leap was five feet and, being a herding and hunting dog, would pull down low flying birds and squirrels leaping from off ramp to on ramp along the interyard network of tree limbs. Sometimes in the middle and late summer they would stop through and treat our garden like a fill up station, and Gypsi would, for the sport and sheer joy of it, which also benefitted us and our garden haul, to take down at least one squirrel a year. This was enough to remind them the rest stop on our property was closed. 

In this precise moment of this precise season, it’s difficult for me to walk without my stick, even in the house

We got slack with the garden and Gypsi is nearly 14 years old; still spry for an old dog, but not as inclined to jump five feet for sport and for joy. Me working on the boat and Amanda out trying to help homeless folks get and keep housing in an increasingly calloused world, in a city bent on gentrification and short money solutions made keeping up the garden a challenge, and for a while we had access to locally farmed vegetables, which was alright. That’s the old American dream, that echo of what used to be the middle class, that notion that if you’re too busy or purple-thumbed to grow a proper garden then you can at least, help financially support small family farms. Damned right. Because that’s what you do when you work odd hours and have a little more money than time. 

But the currents change and this season, as my Amanda calls it, is one in which there is slightly more time than there is money. And our housemate, who is retired, is a solid gardener and so that’s what he does when he feels like it.  After my surgery and recovery, I’ll be able to get out there and help with the garden more of the house repairs that need to be done. In this precise moment of this precise season, it’s difficult for me to walk without my stick, even in the house. The surgeon has ordered me off the NSAID painkillers that work prior to the surgery.  I also had to go get my piercings removed yesterday. 

Calm down! I only have some very vanilla earrings. Five of them. One of them is from the day my second divorce was final. The others are memory markers of years on the river, particularly taking the Mayor Andrew Broaddus Up the river north to South Point for shipyard and my first winter watch and my first trip upriver on the Steamer Belle of Louisville to Gallipolis for shipyard. Tonight we’ll make some last minute preparations. I’m already preparing by getting some Literally indie Literary  podcast episodes loaded and ready to drop while I’m recovering and reaching out to folks I want to talk to on the podcast after the first of the year. I’ve got a few books to read once the initial post-surgical pain meds haze is past, and a manuscript of river stories I plan on editing and expanding. We’ll see how much of that actually gets done, but I do like to plan activities. I figure that tackling Finnegan’s Wake in the wake of a post-surgical haze might be a good mindset for a book that is unreliably narrated, arguably without plot, arguably without actual characters, and what some consider one of the greatest books of literature in the western canon. It could also be utter gutter snipe. It could also be both. One must be open to such things, since the same has been said of Melville’s  Moby Dick. 

And when it comes to absolute gutter snipe, I can think of no place better to end than with an admonition to vote. Not because your views are expressly represented, but because somewhere there’s a  fat squirrel of a human gobbling up all the bird seed and looking at you, wondering why you’re not happy for them. Are you not?

The fireman reads

[Originally published 11.3.26]

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2026, Autumn, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, river life

The River Possum meditates on the meaning of the dragonfly, the last mayfly of the season, and the grasshopper

of seasons and currents and the road and the congregation of the river

“[N]o matter how often I return to the river for work, connection, solace, and baptism, I will have to also push myself out into the world.” 

– from “The River Possum meditates on the life of that perfect pipe wrench for a particular use” October 6th, 2026

 

3D printed animals on my car dash: two different turtles and a possum.

Part of the zoo I drive with: a possum from Robert and Crystal, a tired turtle from , Fiona, and a shy turtle from my daughter. Because the tired turtle looked lonely. (She’s adorably sweet and soft-hearted, just like her dad. Heh.)

En masse mayflies are a nuisance; but this was the last one of the season and I let him have his day, like I get to have mine.

The last few nights on the river have been damn near picturesque. It’s a funny thing, really. No matter how much or often I look at the river from outside the starboard deck window by the firebox or off the fantail checking the wheel during a trip, or out one of the rear windows from the engine room, I don’t ever get tired of the view. The sunsets look like Autumn sunsets now, and the evening air is cool enough to need a jacket.  I don’t take as many pictures as I used to, but that’s mostly because I want to remember these moments for myself; I carve them into my memory the way someone makes a woodblock print. Sometimes I catch small moments and things that people tend to miss or tend to overlook. I found a dead dragonfly the other day. Well, it was almost dead. I think I saw its final wing shudder. It was standing on the wharf next to the Belle like it was standing guard. I didn’t have my phone with me, so I asked Jonah, one of the deckhands, to come over and take a picture for me. He’s one who appreciates the little oddities and didn’t even blink when I asked him to take a picture of a dead bug.

During that same trip, I found a single mayfly in the firebox; and I was a little surprised to find it still alive. I let it alone, except to move it off the bulkhead and onto the chunk of coal Kevin, one of the other engineering assistants, brought in to show the kids who have never seen coal in real life. The mayfly was not amused and eventually hopped down onto the work desk there on the starboard side. En masse mayflies are a nuisance; but this was the last one of the season and I let him have his day, like I get to have mine. 

I found a dead dragonfly the other day. Well, it was almost dead. I think I saw it’s final wing shudder. It was standing on the wharf next to the Belle like it was standing guard.

The Odd Librarian in My Head Chimes in

People whose opinions matter to me tell me that being on the river, working on a now 112 year old memory machine, has been good for my writing. They’re not wrong. Being on the road is good for my writing, too, but in a different way. And I think being at home is good for my writing too, if only because at some point a poet must reflect; and reflecting on anything is difficult to do en medias res, in the middle of things.  There’s something about being part of the congregation of the river that places a body both in motion and in a particular point in time and space. It’s sort of a pat statement to refer to the Belle of Louisville as “living history,” but the odd librarian in my head, that annoying linguistic precisionist, finds it lacking. I’ve stated it before, probably somewhere in one of these missives, but I’ll state it again. History is dead. The living part is what you learn, and the argument could be made that, in these, the falling days of Babylon, that history is doubly dead. Triple even. But that is probably too scary and depressing a thought, so we’ll leave it here. For now. 

More from the Odd Librarian in My Head

I’ve had to learn to accept what comes. This isn’t an easy lesson for me. I’ve never been one to simply accept anything. And it’s important to point out, and it will probably need repeating, that acceptance and capitulation are not the same thing. Accepting what comes means knowing the current and understanding what to do; it means smelling the rain, or the snow, or the lack thereof. Acceptance is about seeing the moment. But it does not necessarily mean staying in that moment. Moments shift. Seasons shift. Capitulation means surrendering to a moment and putting it in amber, the way people sometimes do to dead dragonflies. Capitulation is stagnant water with so little oxygen left that the fish asphyxiate for the absence. Acceptance means knowing you need to find fresh water, or die. 

It’s taken me a surprisingly long time and too many hard lessons to understand the difference. 

The other day when I got in my car to go to the river, I was rolling down the passenger side window for the cross breeze when I saw a grasshopper. It popped up on the ledge and then up on the edge of the window. I watched it for half a beat and gently suggested it head on out, I had to go work. Believe it or not, I’m not adverse to killing bugs. But it depends on the bug. Hornet, mud daubers, biting ants: yes. I even leave mosquitoes alone as long as they leave me alone. I’ll squash a cockroach without giving it a second thought, and except for the mud daubers, I generally say something like, “Be a Buddha.” We need all the help we can get. Grasshoppers, though, are cool. And sometimes they sing. This one, a bright green one, didn’t sing. But if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll hear him one evening sitting on the back porch.

The final mayfly of the season

 

[originally published: https://eymick.substack.com/p/the-river-possum-meditates-on-the-700] 

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2026, America, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

The Condition of the Honor Guard Gets Less Important

Being on the river, being a son, and remembering the anniversary of my dad’s death

Dad in Florida in 1955. Long before I was a thought. He always had something of this swagger in him. Always.

 

The river rose and fell quick.
A late August sweat box, the Ohio Valley
takes its pound of flesh
one drop at a time.

I’m smoking on the wharf before the Sunday cruise. It’s almost time to go get ready to light back off and wait for the telegraph to tell me to Stand By before it tells me we’re going Slow Astern.  You get used to the telegraph calls; some pilots use that telegraph like a gear shift, and some don’t. And not every telegraph call means something has to happen. Sometimes the boiler is tuned in and all you have to do is be prepared in the event something happens. Sometimes there’s an audible, an unusual call. That can take the form of a call that the boat is going Half Astern instead of Slow, and there are several reasons for that; and if I mention any of them here, I will surely leave out the one that an old captain will tell me I left out the most common one, so I’ll just say that the unofficial official policy on the matter is that there is no such thing as a normal cruise, a typical cruise, or a normal day. Unless, of course, the captain refers to it as such and then, as stated in the introduction to the official Rules of the Road for the Western River System, the rules apply except for when the rules don’t apply. If there is a rule that is an inviolate rule in regards to steamboat life, in probably life on the river in general, it’s this: Take Your Break When You Can.  

The American Legion was in town, en masse, over the weekend for a convention at which the Secretary of Dude Brahs was slated to speak. A huge group of the American Legion folks rode the boat, and I always enjoy interacting with veterans. By and large, they’re a no nonsense bunch. And because there’s a slight similarity between riverboat culture and military culture, they are generally good passengers. Curious, especially the Navy folks, like visiting the boiler and, like stationary boiler operators, have a base of knowledge and experience that can drive the conversation into more interesting places.

My dad was a veteran and while he didn’t hang out at the Legion Hall, I did, for a while, have a gig playing ‘Taps’ for military funerals in my hometown of Bethel, Ohio. I kept dress clothes in my locker at school and when I was called, I’d get out of class, grab my clothes, bring my trumpet, and go honor the fallen dead.  I took this very seriously. The guy who always picked me up was this guy named Archie Boyce. Archie had this thick, immortal mustache and barely restrained eyebrows, but I’m pretty sure that was all the hair on his head. He was always nice, always talked nicely about my dad, even though they hadn’t really talked in years. When I was a kid, Bethel and Tate Township were dry and Legion Hall 406 was the only actual bar in town. The bar was in the basement and sometimes Archie would take me to the legion hall and let me saddle up to the bar. He always made the same joke about being too young to drink. The honor guard was usually there, pre-gaming for the funeral. 

As I’ve gotten older, I understand this better. While I didn’t go the military route, I have a lot of friends who have, and when I was younger and after my dad died, I spent several years hanging around several Vietnam Vets, one of the wars my dad served in (the other was Korea, another war that wasn’t considered a war in the name of a legal loophole.)  I don’t remember the condition of the honor guard when we buried my dad. In the end, it didn’t matter because nothing mattered. The rifle shots seemed louder to me then than at any time before.I remember very little except that it rained and it was the last time I played “Taps.”   

I developed the tendency of sons
of dead dads to hunt out father figures.

17 year-old-boys have so much to learn
between that and watching him

die for a decade, most of what I needed
just confused me, slow and stubborn

living in the echo of honor guard rifle shots
and a trumpet note lingering long

in the September rain

“Getting your break in while you can, eh?” 

It was one of the passengers, an American Legionnaire who was waiting to board. I affirmed that I was. Did I mention that military folks understand the schedule? River time has in common with military time the concept of “hurry up and wait.” No one asked me what time boarding was because they already knew to a person when they were going to be able to get on the boat. As I was talking to him, it came out that I operated the boiler. He’d been in the Navy, and had read all about the Belle. So we talked about the boat, about the boilers, about the engines and steam pumps. I invited him to come down and look at the boiler, which he did after we were underway. 

My dad was one of those people who could talk to pretty much anyone. My wife is that way. I am not. It takes a certain amount of work and putting on a bit of my father’s face to interact with people. Left to my own, I’m quiet, broody, and full of conflicting currents. I alternate between peace and violence, song and silence, fire and ash, flash floods and calm waters. I have days of boundless energy and vision; then I have days when I can see nothing, feel little, and have the energy to turn over and go back to sleep. Most of the time, I make myself move on days like this. I don’t remember dad ever acting like he was having a bad day, though I know he had them. When I was 10-years-old, he and my mom came home from his  doctor’s appointment telling me and my brother that he would need to wear an oxygen bottle. They were still trying to figure out what caused it. The default explanation was that he smoked when he was younger; but he quit before he turned 40. At this conversation, he was almost 50. People who quit smoking report better health over time. Neither my dad nor the Department of Defense thought his time in the Navy, working in the belly of a diesel gunship on the North China Sea, nor his time as a jet tech and mechanic during Vietnam, preparing jets for bombing raids into North Vietnam, had anything to do with his lung problems. But he seemed to adapt as best he could. Or, that was what he let us see.

My status on the boat is both easy to explain and difficult to make myself understand. I’m there, but I’m not there. I work a few cruises a week, and I’m grateful for the work. I like being back on the river, back in the firebox, back in the engine room. There’s a telegraph in my core that rings messages from the invisible pilot house, telling me whether I’m heading ahead or astern, slow or full, or even half. I shift between being on the boat in a familiar pool and being cast off onto unfamiliar currents and conditions. I know I’m lucky to live the life I’m living and I’m more or less enjoying the ride. I find myself wondering what Dad would think about all of this, but I can’t live in that space too long because the dad in my head is a me-at-17-year-old-dad. This may or not make sense. You don’t get to know your parents as adults until you ARE an adult. Everything else about them is a product of what you need them to be. I’ve found this is true even when the dad in question wasn’t a good dad, though I was fortunate in that regard. Dad was good at being a dad, and where he failed was because he, like all dads, was just a human being and not the second hand of God he was in my head when I was small. But when my current status is confusing, even to me, I’m comforted by the thought that my me-at-17-year-old-dad would think it makes perfect sense. When I smoke my pipe, I think he’d probably chide me a little and tell me I should quit. But then again, his father smoked cigars. And it wasn’t the cigars that killed him. 

[first published on my substack: https://eymick.substack.com/p/the-condition-of-the-honor-guard]

 

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