Tag Archives: love

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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2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape

[The Water Dragon in the Year of the Fire Horse]

The soundtrack for reentry involves a strong base line
an electric guitar, and deep earth anger focused
into high beam love.

What the mistake is, is believing love just is light.
Love is also the dark byproduct, the will, the drive
the expansive power to move the engines of all the worlds.
Love lives in the dark and shimmers and calls forth.

Rolling out to Baltimore on a not too full bus, I remembered myself.
The mind unknotting itself, the bones
untangle and unfurl. I am the night hawk of light and shadow
an eclipse, a solar wind, a lunar soul, a wing, a song, a convection current, a prevailing wind.

These wings, these feet, these lungs inhale
thunder and exhale lightning. Returned, rested, and embraced
I breathe fire and plumb the deepest channels
upon which the entire globe floats.

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2026, Amelia Grace, Day Book, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, Stella, the no-scape

Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.27.26

Mean Muggin’. Selfie.

She has inherited my heart, I think. And so I may have to teach her to fight.

I was taught to fight my heart, this loneliness that nothing fixes, even happiness. They tried, anyway. My mother encouraging gentleness. My father demanding discipline. I tried teaching these lessons that I had not learned well to my daughter the same way. It worked out as well as anyone could expect.  

The loneliness. People often misunderstand the word. Loneliness. I am loved and seen and embraced and fortunate in that regard. But people are driven by primal urges the way diesel drives the steam engines on old riverboats. It radiates out, like a leaky oil can. Some are driven by love. Some by anger. Some by sadness. There are others. And then there are those of us driven by an impossible loneliness. It’s being a room full of people and not connecting to any of them. It’s being in a room full of family and friends and feeling rudderless. It’s being alone on a city sidewalk and drifting in and out traffic. It’s waking up each morning and having to remind yourself that even loneliness can be a blessing, and what a wonder it is when there is one person who can see through the mist to the heart the bleeds and wants and needs and loves and sometimes needs the loneliness, too. It sometimes drives people away without meaning to.

But it takes time to master and there are pitfalls. It’s easy to try and fill the loneliness with things. It never works. 

I had to learn to fight. My daughter did, too. Her daughter has inherited our heart, I think. And I think I will try teaching her differently. That sometimes, it’s ok to fight. Especially when the world is wrong. Because the heart never is.

Me and the brightest star in my sky. Family photo.

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