Tag Archives: Kentucky

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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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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