the trick: swim with the hours, let your Circadian rhythm syncopate with the waves and the early rising moon.
allow yourself one non-healthy treat a day, a candy bar, a cookie, a cold beer after work. eat an apple or a piece fruit each day. drink plenty of water
and drink your coffee black. allow yourself to sleep. read and, when possible, look for signs: feathers left by angels, the blue heron, the egrets, the carp and catfish jumping. schools of minnows near the hull.
breathe and know you are breathing.
Tag Archives: riverman
physiology of a steamboat fireman
my eyes spotlights the river the pressure gauge the clock
my feet tapping to the tune the cruise tocks
my knees the pistons moving pitman legs
my head a series of endless bilges and bleeding bulkheads
my belly the boiler forever firing
my hands mere extensions of valves of wrenches of torches
Day 57, 2024
no no it’s not
not being on watch
the days beginning to linger
this patch
of a Fool’s Spring
still waiting on the crocus bloom
still no it’s not any of that
making my boots ache
for old soil
my tired walking stick
broken still sings
of the open road
but the river draws its own
and here I sit
under a fading sunset
one more piece of driftwood
coughed up in a storm