Notices by Tellio (tellio@mastodon.social), page 4

@whitmer1988 It is interesting that an online class at most universities that gets to fifty students is considered huge. At least where I work it is. That isn't even beginning to get large in a F2F environment. I agree with the main point of the article. Online ain't cheap. If anyone thinks it is, then they are up the hiearchy. Yup. Up the fucking hiearchy.

Blue Skies- The Molly Morgan Quintet https://youtu.be/d-QZ6BEIfb4 via @YouTube

@Pixley Here is a tree I love and have hopes for into the future. I dig up babies in the spring and have a nursery for them at home so that I can foster them to new homes after they have grown into a healthy whip. The lawn mowers beat me to the sprouts last year so I must save them this year. #smallstories

@dogtrax Goooooooooooooooaaaaaaallllllllllllllll!

When the morning frost layers our tin roof something happens that has no name. The sun rises and after awhile--a phase change. Frost into water. It drips down the upper roof onto our porch roof. There it beats a thousand thousand unique cacophoni, a metal tympani, but it has no name. It needs a name. I name it without telling even my god. My damned word. #smallstories

@dogtrax @uschi_the_listener Makes me think of Dali.

@dogtrax Amen.

@dogtrax Marvelous. Trees with coats and frequent flower miles.

I Am a Plum Tree

Am I the only one
who celebrates
your coming
and going?
Am I the only one
who transplants
and shares
your offspring?
Am I the only one
who has tasted
your perfect,
Damson fruit?
Am I the only one
who dreads
and fears
your passing?
Am I?
As far as I know,
I am.
I fear
I am.

#smallpoems

Did you know that the sound of my snoring kitty sounds exactly the same as that of a weakly bleating new-borne lamb? I didn't. I walked down to the barn three times before I realize it. Shepherding, still crazy after all these years.

#smallstories https://youtu.be/bs7FWY0K7VI and check out this marvelous site for finding 'second hand' songs (aka, 'covers').

@dogtrax True in part, but the skill (what little I have) comes from an open, beginner's mind that takes nothing for granted. I know where I need to go and what i need to listen for...then I become some kind of null tabula to be written on with some kind of unspeaking message. Not mystical, just wordless. Every one of us has this experience. It's not just a shepherd's call. We are all called to the mystery of the margins.

Lambing Time

Between
a waxing, butter moon
And
a faintly piping dawn
the ewe
bore
one lamb
near
the green equinox,
her birth bellows
ringing
down the hollar.
I helped a little,
my steaming hands
soaked
in amniotics
as I guided
the big-shouldered
ram lamb
out,
with gentle tugs
to the tempo of
the ewe's
and the moon's
contractions,
the lamb
announcing:
Alive, alive, O!

#smallpoems

@verityvirtue Yes. Like a rhizome. Rooted. Ready. Teaching in instinct. Hmmm. I like your word "knowing".

Speaking as a shepherd. So much of what amounts to the skill seems routine but doesn't feel like it in the field. Eight ewes here, two ewes in jugs, five ewes on the hill. Corresponding lambs. How do they look? Eyes right? Mouth warm? Bellies? Smell ok around the navel? Hay? Plenty of water, clean and in clean buckets? Walking the field to check the grass, check the fence, to listen for a new bleat. And the aggregate effect is a gestalt of OK. Calm. Still. A lamb. Asleep. #smallstories

@Boobsonfire

Political Haiku

Jagged. Ugly. Fraught.
Intersectionality.
Aca-speech. No soul.

#smallpoems

@dogtrax File under #allthingsanalog #millenialsdont care

@lauraritchie Sheep will eat most anything, but they shy away from the nightshades. Trample, trample, trample.

I was on the track team in high school.Shot putter.Not very good. My first big track meet, waiting my turn in the circle, the guy in front of me lost control of ball out of his hand.It flew an improbable arc to the right and hit a bystander...in the head.Dropped like a shot. Surely dead.I would not step into the circle.I found out the person who was hit was OK, but I never believed that. I knew deep down that when it comes off the hand wrong, well...it's deep.Concussive.Profound. #smallstories

A Shepherd's Keep

Any 'shepherd's" work
must be
quotidien.
It must
reflect memory
into the future
back into
the present,
echolocating
the now
from:

a sniff and taste of amniotic fluids
on the wind,

the quickbleat from
a lamb one second old,

the anxious scrapes of a nesting ewe

or the unblinking, cud chewing faraway inward look of a soon mama.

A shepherd's promise
is to keep
it quiet
as it's kept
paying it forward
with the
whole
sensorium.

#smallpoems