Tag Archives: American prose

river possum, Ohio River, work, poetry
2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose, Working Class Literature

The River Possum meditates on the life of that perfect pipe wrench for a particular use:

the blue heron, the wrench, down and west off Big Savage Mountain

Saturday night on the river. The cruise ended up being a dockside event because of wind. People ask me all the time if we still cruise when it’s raining. They almost always seem surprised when I say “Yes, rain doesn’t keep us dockside. But the wind will.” A flat bottom sternwheel steamboat becomes a sail if there’s a cross wind above 20 miles per hour in the channel on the Ohio River. Our other boat, the Mary M. Miller, can manage because she has two screws, each turned by 425 horsepower straight six diesel engines attached to Cummins generators with copper rings about the same diameter of a large pizza. This past Saturday night in particular, the captains decided to make a go of it. It had been raining all day, the way it rains around here when Fall makes its proper appearance. One day it’s so hot you’re sweating in places you think time and the elements have forgotten; the next day, it rains, the leaves on the trees begin to actively let go and put on the end of summer fashion show, and there’s an ever so slight but brisk kiss in the wind. Saturday was that day. And I could tell by the white caps and the choppy waves on the river that I might get a call on the telegraph to go Astern Half on the boiler to give them more steam and more pull for getting the boat off the 4th Street Wharf. And that’s what happened. But even with all the steam I was giving them, even with all the steam the chief was giving them, the wind won out the day and we stayed dockside.

That’s the way it goes sometimes. And while there were still passengers who insisted on abusing the crew and food and beverage folks for things well outside their pay grade, the night went off as well as a last minute dockside event could go off. Stephen, the Night Chief, gave me and the other Engineering Assistant the option for one of us to go home. Dockside events only require a licensed engineer and a plus one to keep an eye on the boiler, the gen sets, whatever. I told Stephen I needed the hours, which was true. Kevin, who also has retirement income from a storied career at FedEx, went home. 

Being on the water, being down on the 4th Street Wharf, the Space Between the Bridges, means being at once in a single place and in all places all at once; the Ohio River connects, in some fashion, everything to everything. I was moored, in a way, at the 4th Street Wharf. It was a necessary shipyard stop.

I get scheduled for roughly two cruises a week. I’m grateful to be back, but still very much aware of the reasons why I need to be back at all: namely, a year ago this month, my career was pulled out from under me. Sometimes I think I should approach this with all the focus and rage of a good old fashion revenge movie. One of those with all the blood and bile and drama of a Criterion Collection Kurosawa movie. In this situation, one should always ask, “What would Toshiro Mifune do?” Depending on whether you’re in Seven Samurai mode or Yohimbo  mode, the reaction can vary. If you’re in Rashomon mode, you’re just getting blamed for all the shit you didn’t do because of the shit you actually did do that people choose to remember. I’m eight years sober, so my Drunken Angel era (I hope)  is over. But generally I think it matters more to live in the moment I’m in and use what comes. That’s as close to tao as I manage to get.

I’ve made and continue to make good use of my time; doing what might be some of the best writing of my life. Tension is the wellspring for art. Even if it’s just the tension between the non-gel tip of a pen and the texture of the paper used. Tension is the invisible ingredient that turns craft into art; it’s Grandma’s finger in the cookie dough that makes the cookies taste better. And while my poetry has always existed in a state of tension, my last three collections of poetry: Growl & Mud, A Treatise on Unseen Stars, and The Call Sign is Jonah, exist as the end result of tension between poetry and working: first as a lot dog (event security for university sports at a university where I used to teach), then as a wharf dog and finally as a river possum.  And right now, the tension from which my craft is hopefully becoming art is the tension of being the particular pipe wrench for that particular use. 

Coming back from Frostburg, west and down Big Savage Mountain, I realized that no 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. Being on the water, being down on the 4th Street Wharf, the Space Between the Bridges, means being at once in a single place and in all places all at once; the Ohio River connects, in some fashion, everything to everything. I was moored, in a way, at the 4th Street Wharf. It was a necessary shipyard stop. I was able to get my first hip surgery. I found the blue heron and the giant cat fish. I met mermaids and drowned men and shadow walkers. And I learned about the world under the water. I was told the stories of great people and quiet people and true people. River folk are the keepers of stories, the living vaults of forgotten knowledge. Standing watch on the wharf in the winter is its own baptism, as is contending with the flood water. I was reborn and found a poetics of growls and mud that continues to speak and insist that the wind is calling. I don’t know what the coming year holds. I hope I get to be back on the river. I love the folks I work with, and I love a 112-year-old living memory steam machine. 

Down and west, driving back on I-68, the concrete rode like wind thermal, taking me and Amanda home. The funny thing about thermals and wind currents is that while they’re generally predictable, conditions can make them shift, too. It’s important to be ready to shift with them. And so sometimes, I’m that perfect pipe wrench for that particular job. And sometimes, I’m the giant catfish, fighting upstream. And sometimes, I’m the blue heron. 

 

[originally published on 10.7.26: https://eymick.substack.com/p/the-river-possum-meditates-on-the]

 

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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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2026, essay, fiction, Louisville Stories, Ohio River Valley Literature, summer

Beautiful Flowers, Old Trees – A short essay on change

 

Flowers on the west-facing fence line that will not die in spite of the vines.

The backyard is perpetually an overgrown mess. It just is. I have good intentions and we have, in years past, had a pretty decent and thriving garden. Our backyard in the tight little neighborhood where me and my wife live is ringed on two sides by large maple and oak trees: one of which hangs over our house like the Sword of Damocles, the other of which is half dead and both of which share the fence line with our easterly neighbor, Larry and his adult son Matthew, who through sheer attrition has risen to be the Sketchiest Person on the Block.

The other tree is an old oak in the alley behind our house that isn’t really an alley, and at night in July the long overhanging branches are littered with lightening bugs. Because our house is built on what is technically a swamp and this is the lower Ohio River Valley, we get mosquitoes, but don’t spray them because killing the mosquitoes would also kill off the lightening bugs. That tree is largely healthy.

The Rose of Sharon that returned.

After a storm last summer, Matthew hired his then buddies who lived on the other side of him, a rotating collection of tweakers who were either burning shit in the backyard or curating a rotating gallery of meth-fueled art in the same backyard made from “found” electronic devices, to cut down a tree limb the wind had taken down. One of the three conversations I’ve ever had with Larry was to point out that there was nothing to keep them from suing him if they were injured, and that they’d probably win. He only smiled and said “I just got them to sign a piece of paper saying they can’t sue me if they’re dead.”

After they finished cutting it down, the tweakers then tossed it over the fence and into our yard, effectively destroying the fence (that has still not been repaired) and damaging the Rose of Sharon tree, which was one of my favorites. I cut up the log and propped up the fence a bit so the dogs wouldn’t try to wander. It’s not enough.

Every spring I aspire to a yard that is beautiful and practical. I want this more for Amanda than for myself, but for myself, too. She’s got the green thumb and I think if I could clear it all out and clean it up and erect a tall enough fence to keep the tweakers from stealing from our garden, that I might be ok with Matthew and his mini archery and axe throwing range that he sets up too close to the shared fence line. But then spring turns into summer and fall is knocking on the door,  and I end up feeling a little disappointed in myself.

Along the back fence on in the shade of the tree that grows in the alley.

But there’s always little bits of beauty and death around that remind me this season will not last and that there’s always next year.

I’m lousy at a curated garden and I know it. But the tweakers are gone and there aren’t nearly the number of random fires being set in our tightly squeezed little neighborhood.  Transformation is an ongoing process, right? Apathy can be a plan of its own.

 

 

 

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