Tag Archives: love

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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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, the no-scape

Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.16-2.19.26

2.16.26

We’re in the wet season, what is probably a fool’s spring, and the snow and ice have melted. The skunks have started mating and the peeps, I am told, are peeping in the Olmstead Parks.

I can’t prove it, but I think I am saved by love and by eating an apple a day and by a spiritual subroutine that operates in the deep programming of my mind. It’s been decades, but I have been, since I became aware, been working at making subtle changes to the key operating system, digging out errata programming and faulty subroutines. An apple a day and a perpetual search for poetry, neither of which disappoints me, will be what saves this machine. As the body wears out I replace parts with titanium and with words and someday all that will remain is a beating heart that bleeds language and whatever spare metal parts there are. And then someday, the words will erode away, get carried on the wind and they will find new hearts. And then the reconfiguration will be complete.


2.17.26

The year of the Fire Horse comes ‘round once every 60 years, or so says the internet, which has gone from a depository of all information to a badly organized big box store where the search agents are underpaid and unhelpful and the expiration dates are … flexible. The fireworks at midnight disturbed a neither deep nor restful sleep. I wish I could blame current events but I find that the world intrudes on my interior geography the way water soaks into river rocks: immersed long enough, some water does seep in through the pores. But I learned a long time ago that I do not carry the entire weight of the world. My share is only what seeps in, and what I allow to remain.

I’m too busy looking forward to look down. I only wish that this slight fever had accompanying dreams.


2.18.26

A fresh pot of coffee on the stove,
an apple, a pipe, and a shower
and the world moves on

2.19.26

Blinded By the Light // this life informed by a Manfred Mann song / a guitar and keyboard riff that beats like a heart that never stops // I do not stop / I do not stop // until someday it will all stop

the songs are right // this is just one big space ship and we / and we / are float// ing

—

my 20’s were the death cult years

I’ve gone a little crazy a few times,
to the great disappointment of people
surprised they never saw it coming

and it was in my 20’s I learned
most people are fine sharing their sorrows
but it doesn’t leave any room in them
to share someone else’s

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