Showing posts with label Central Valley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Central Valley. Show all posts

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Chalmers


          (Chalmers Gage, 1918-2018)

He was a dairy farmer
in Elk Grove, California.
The Valley. The fingers
of his hands were as thick
as saplings, and when he
took a dip of Copenhagen
tobacco, he loaded a third
of a can between lip
and lower teeth. He never

raised his voice. Gave
the impression the world
at large permanently
perplexed him, as if he
were asking himself,
Why do people make
everything so hard when
work is hard enough?"

Of his wife, he sometimes
said, "I don't think I'll ever
figure that gal out." Not
complaining. Just saying.

In his sixties he sold the farm
and lived another 35 years.
Died at a hundred, quiet like,
the one last job to finish.


hans ostrom 2019

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Lunar Eclipse Seen from the Central Valley

(California: April 1979)


 We sipped tequila from a bottle,
saw a shadow push into the moon,
which took on a planet’s gravitas,
losing its varicose craters, its

coin’s gloss.  Then its yellow
turned brown and red enough
to make a farmer look at it
as arable space. We enjoyed

the eclipse’s math and chance,
tried to focus binoculars
using a rooftop TV antenna
as approximative point.

We tried to shape our minds
around such fear and magic
as hunters/gatherers
may have felt. We failed.

We joked, and after midnight,
we opened doors of our several
abodes in a college-town stucco
hive.  We set clocks,

listened to household engines,
to music from vinyl undulating on a
turn-table like glassy harbor
water. Our dreams orbited desire.




Hans Ostrom 1979/2017