Buoyancy

10.27.25. Morning

Yesterday’s cold coffee and Joe Strummer for the morning ear worm, Come on everybody, drift away / on the road to rock ‘n’ roll. This channel ain’t for tourists and day traders. Given that I am, at least financially, drifting at the moment -- I was informed via Zoom meeting while I was four hours from home that my position on the Belle of Louisville was eliminated due to a budgetary shortfall created by a series of equally short-sighted decisions by management, and the piper that must be paid is always paid out of departments that had nothing at all to do with the decisions in question -- I suppose the only thing left, unless I get called back in the spring as a seasonal engineer, is the road to rock ‘n’ roll.

I remember everything / things I can’t forget. Me neither, John Prine. My hope and goal for going with the Belle up to the shipyard was to see her up in the dry dock. The machinations that mankind builds fascinate me -- the lock system along the Ohio is one such machination; our ability to move and adjust the river to suit our needs is something most people take for granted. The oldest operating locks in the world date from 12th Century China, the Chinese Grand Canal. Lock and channel systems date from medieval China, around 963. This is in the category of what Captain Mike Fitzgerald calls “practical physics.” I tend to think of dry docks the same way. Think of a dry dock as a floating cradle for boats. This is where I think I finally began to understand the whole ship-in-the-bottle conundrum. The shipyard guys sink the dock by filling the bilges with water. The Belle was then pushed into the dock and when she was in place, the water was pumped out of the bilges and the dock rose and took the boat up with it.

Magic.

Once the boat was out of the water and it settled weird, walking on the deck felt strange. You adjust to the fact that boats are never really straight and flat. I wonder at the mind which figured out that the buoyancy of water can support the shape of a vessel as long as the vessel is both strong enough to be water worthy and flexible enough to tolerate currents. It’s a marvel of the human mind, a real achievement of intellect that supports my belief that given the right resources, we can fix just about any problem. Of course fixing some problems requires that collective will be listed on the work order; and therein, naturally, lies part of the reason why some things continue into decrepitude and ruin. That and the absence of imagination are epidemics that bleed out entire civilizations.

The other reason I wanted to stay with the boat until she was up in the dry dock was I wanted to actually participate in winterizing the engine room. In seasons past, I was transferred to winter watch. This time, I had the opportunity to help winterize the water pumps. Kevin had already broken down the steam side of the pumps. I broke down the water side of the pumps, except for the steam fire pump: I ran out of time to finish that one, but I am confident that Kevin or Tom got it done. Regardless of how useful I proved myself -- and I feel like I did -- there isn’t any work I did that someone else in our department couldn’t have also done. There’s an odd comfort in that kind of continuity. I’m far from the first to have an old steamboat take over a portion of my soul; and I don’t really think I’ll be the last, or the only one.

I hung around the bow while the boat was being moved into the dry dock. The old girl creaks and shifts.The crew at Amherst Madison was careful and practiced, and I felt a certain comfort in the way they handled getting the Belle up and out of the water.

My time at the Belle is over, for now. But I am still here in Louisville, old River City at Mile Marker 604. Drifting, sure, but still buoyant. I still plan to go back and expand on my travel journals. But for now, I need to go get something for breakfast.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the organizer of the River Roots Poets and publishers of the Anthology, Holly Brians Ragusa, Sherry Cook Stanforth, and Richard Hague, for including me in the publication even though I was unable to make the reading. You can find the digital anthology here.

I’d also like to thank you, dear readers, for your eyes and ears and care. I’m going to be ramping up what I do here and I hope you come along for the ride. In case you’re also interested in my poetry, I do have books for sale on my personal website here, notably A Treatise on Unseen Stars (2025) and Growl & Mud: Collected Poems (2024). With my work schedule no longer an impediment, I will be able to start making the rounds at open mics, and am pondering a limited reading tour. More on that as it comes into focus.

If you like what I do here and if you’re able, please consider supporting my work through a paid subscription. If you’re not able, please continue to read for free. I’m grateful for each and every one of you.