Coal black eyes burrow my depths…
you possess talent for comforting
or receding.
Yet you have your swagger-
annoyed to be brushed
pout when scolded
demand structure for
mealtime and walks.
Allow young paws to caress you
but dodge open hands
atop your head.
Sense human angst and fear
snuggling by their side
just as you sidle up for
yours during a storm.
We live in harmony
as long as I obey
Sir Clancy’s rules.
Happy Birthday Little Man!
One can fix a ring upon a hand
yet never really breathe in
sweetened, redolent romance reaping
gold from dark macadam stripped
or a tidy fist of dimpled filters,
honey among a swoln hummock’s heart
we’d nestled there in fragrant talks,
what figures tingling tongues unveil
from quietly crackling cherries’ traces—
rings unwound from silvery strings
that craze old Archimedes still.
Tabernacled under the spreading sky,
we would play on the rock formations
in a now-logged Jackson County woods.
To us kids, this shack was both primitive
and paradise–we’d have to ford a river
Deeper into the woods: ghosts of homesteads
I’ve tried all my life to find a way back
The Chimney Stone. The Fort. Mermaid Lagoon.
The Car. These, and other gifts of glacial magnitude,
our little country scattered along the forest ground.
A daemon runs in the background and supervises the system.
Modern daemons follow a simpler yet powerful scheme
(here called “new-style” daemons)
This makes it easier to control.
all new-style daemons communicate via listening.
daemons are automatically activated
to start-up and maintain the daemon, use the directive
it is possible to bind activation to events.
This provides for nicer abstraction and gives administrators the option to enable controlling/manipulating.
simpler or better daemons shall be bound.
Make sure to set a good human-readable description
Do not disable, unless you really know what you do.
If not already implemented, add an optional command
to disable daemonization.
—
Found poem (erasure) from the Linux Man Pages. Full text here:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/daemon.7.html
I want to dream
in a place
where I have been before
not dreaming.
I want the face
in that place
to be yours.
I want your breath
on my neck
to be what woke me.
-I think it’s safe to say this was stirred up by reading Joseph Allen Nichols’ “Another Exodus” the other day-
__________________
Was it God?
Having come to strive with man?
Had you seen him all along?
Jacob?
Is that why you, rising in the nighttime,
Saw them safe across the water?
And came back to linger alone?
Jacob?
Could you have died?
If you had not held on so tightly,
Struggling until dawn?
Jacob.
He had to maim you to get loose and you still held on
He had to maim you to get loose
He had to maim you,
Jacob,
Grappling through the darkness till the light
cracked through.
I won’t let go until you bless me
I won’t let go
I won’t
There will be consequences for your toiling with the Lord.
All your questions will not be answered
But you will leave this place with a new name
And you will walk like a man broken.
i’m fighting
off sleep
and the
demons in the dark–
a cage
clamping down.
this rage,
ripe for the harvest–
i taste it, too.
These old woods
are a thick wildness
the many mysteries
of all its dangerous parts
pulling together
where the strong beams
of nature’s fine architecture
are easily revealed
life is tied together at the roots,
beating as one heart,
the quick pulse of an old forest
What mysteries unfold
in the rich depths of the dark woods
where the stones fall down
the hillside like a staircase
inviting the all too curious hiker
upward and deeper in
birds, bugs, and life
in its chaotic kinetic fire-rich pulse
sings its living song
stand still, hold your breath, listen,
you can hear the movement of the still places
in between the shadows and undergrowth
holding all those trees up
tying them down with roots
When the creek bed is dry,
each stone a stair step
up, up, up,
into the wildness
where the tumble of creek rocks
roll down the hillside
shadows and the cool part of the day
tucked in between the trees
sunlight is a prism,
the leaves cutting it into manageable slices
Thick, rich, undergrowth
to hold up the heights
of all those tall tress
the strong roots to bind them
this is the architecture of nature
sunlight reaches through the leaves
the woods grows wild here
Sometimes Abisha will remind me that she misses
our old cheese master, Becky.
And the lights above us blink an answer.
She and another manager
no longer alive have shadow boxes in our cheese shop:
Pictures, jackets, momentos of connection.
I believe we’ve learned the proper offerings:
for Becky, herb d’affinois. Maybe a baguette
and some roasted red tomato.
For Brett, who sang praise of the muffaletta
and talked about horseradish-
Why not horseradish cheddar and muffaletta?
I can’t recall if he liked bread cheese, too,
but he’s the type who loved to man a grill.
Of Jesse, we remember what he did not want
by way of cheese offerings:
he didn’t like the cambozola blue. No,
he wouldn’t have blue at all but he
had a passion for songs, classic rock,
and dogs, especially Pizza and Garnet.
To honor means sometimes
to honor what is unwanted:
Jesse wouldn’t want
for us to fear our own ghosts.
