Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts

Monday, September 4, 2023

Pale Parody

 The Old Earth spins
as it rolls
around the even older
Sun,
whose light Moon
bounces
onto Earth in a genial,
pale parody.


hans ostrom 2023

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Classy Sun

All that light today. So generous
of the sun, the only one.
The shape of objects could be known
without touching them: often helpful

A crow poked at a bone,
which shone pearly gray.
I was witness to this and other
tableaux, as sunfalls

poured down and down
and the sun gave as much
of itself as it could. It is
a dedicated, hard-working star.

I waved my appreciation.
The sun acknowledged this
by splashing some light
on my hand. Classy.


hans ostrom 2020

Thursday, January 31, 2019

In Starlight Today

Sunlight is starlight, and our sun
is part of a constellation as constructed
by entities in galactic elsewheres.

The starlight was out and all around
today. I walked in it. It was
very bright. I felt good,

strolling and standing there
near a star. It seemed like an
impossible sort of thing to occur.


hans ostrom 2019

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

New Stars, Please

As we know,
the night sky needs updating.
Many stars visually
echo light from dead
sources. It's
astronomical lying.

Has Orion's belt
fallen off completely?

Has Ursa Major suffered
a mortal wound?

Are all the Seven Sisters
still a family?

I recommend looking
through glasses that filter
out light from dead stars.

True, astrologers might
be horrified. A bad
night for their horoscopes--
who could have predicted it?



hans ostrom 2018

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

Monday, April 27, 2015

The Great Photon River

I wonder about the number of electrons
in me. I know you wonder the same
about the number in you. I wonder about
their origin. And I wonder about photons:
fiat photons. Sometimes, ego

forgets to block out all transmissions
from the broader spectrum,
in which instants
you may glimpse,
I can too,

the scene that shows it's all,
including here and us, one river
of light flowing around
and through black-hole boulders
and dark-matter mountains.



hans ostrom 2015