Reaching for Odessa, Part VII
Donal Awakes

A Work in Progress
74

At dawn awash in real light not electric

after a night becalmed Donal noticed dew drops

sparkling in sunlight in the sailboat’s attic

a metaphor high up in the shroud tops.

A well-positioned web with little hope of flies

a spider’s food supply at risk far from land

but a spider can wait weeks before it dies

while a soldier in a trench must make a last stand.

A spider existing aloft bereft its supply chain

showed Donal the way to slay the minotaur

destroy his supply lines so he’d have to proclaim

some kind of victory to explain the slaughter.

And then his spell broken and with his end near

An uprising makes the minotaur disappear.

So Donal set sail with spider webs glistening

giving him a compass to steer west-northwestward

shouting defiance with no one listening

for he was alone going purposefully forward

Irishly planning programming a master graph

showing nodes and connections of a war machine

allowing discoveries without any math

because visualization lets human eyes key in

to high value targets on a cinema screen

handheld in the field by a wounded warrior

able to guide stealthy weapons in between

defenders attacking without fear or favor.

Reaching for Odessa by a circuitous route

sunshine on his shoulder his mind astute.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

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