Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Love and Toilet Paper

Somebody once asked Johnny Cash
what the secret to a successful marriage
was--his second had worked out well.

In his tremulous baritone,
Johnny answered, "Two
bathrooms." Once upon

an era, a lucky couple had two
bathrooms, one downstairs,
one upstairs, where bedrooms

were. One night around midnight,
the husband noticed the upstairs
bathroom had no toilet paper.

He trudged downstairs
to where a storeroom lay,
and where an awakened cat

looked at him the way a general
looks at a private. The man
apologized to the furry general,

fetched rolls of toilet paper,
and took them upstairs.
In the morning, the wife said,

"I noticed you got us some toilet
paper in the middle of the night.
That is love," she added.

hans ostrom 2023

Saturday, July 15, 2023

The Dark Matter of Love

Physicists know what dark matter
does but not what it is. (So it's like
love.) It exerts gravity like mass--
a bunch of matter. It's probably
made of particles because what isn't?

Otherwise, the scientists know nothing,
call it "dark matter" for now, and watch
it work, doing their galactic math. I

love her. I don't know what love's
made of, but I know the force it exerts
on me, and what I do for her
because of it. For me, that's good
enough, and of course I assume
that particles are involved.

hans ostrom

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Holding on to Warmth

(nonet form: one less syllable per line)



Wind moaned so loud I thought it was you
on your side of our bed island.
Got up--temp was way below
freezing--freezing rain on
the way. Got back in bed.
Held on to you.
on to warmth,
our warmth,
love.

hans ostrom, 2022

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

missed ferry

you missed the ferry. waited
on that loaf-shaped green island,
glum on a soggy slick dock.

I waited on the other dock.
saw then the ferry coming,
a floating cake. here

you came. smiles and a
hug in rain. I thought of
how many humans had met,

will meet like this, down
through wet and dry centuries,
after crossing water, deserts,

mountains... then I crossed
back to the moment, heard how
your voice shaped words,

lit laughter. your laughter.


hans ostrom 2021

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Life Is Just a Breath


Life is just a breath,
A breath in empty space,
Until love takes the breath
Away and to a different place.



hans ostrom 2020

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Old Sweet Song

(for J.)

I'm grateful for whatever
time we have.
I hope we soon don't have
to say goodbye.

Time is short
but love is long.
Contentment
is not wrong. 

It's been the dearest privilege
knowing you.
You've loved me and I'm still
not certain why.

Time is short
but love is long.
Contentment
is not wrong. 


hans ostrom 2020

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Feel Like

You make me feel
like I have a fancy hat
on my head. The right
size, too. You make
me feel like
I could live among frogs,
as long as you were
pondside with me.

You make me feel
like a lost key
a mermaid picked up
from the bottom
of a sea. That's me.

You make me feel
like a simile
translated into
all the languages,
then printed
on the perfume
of a very peaceful day.


hans ostrom 2019

Monday, April 29, 2019

The Very Nowness of You

 ("The Very Thought of You," a
ballad composed by Ray Noble)


The nowness of you
in your motion and thinking,
the present rectitude of your
existence, with earrings, as
it happens (it happens)--
this is separate from our life
together. Our life together
is an invisible sculpture
representing our ideas
and memories of us. It's
exhibited in the gallery of days.
The you right-now-here is
someone and something
to be discovered, and it seems
I just discovered you one
more time. I find it quite exciting.


hans ostrom 2019


Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Off Your Coast

It looks like I'm just off your coast,
cold in a boat. A night sea's no fun.
A buoy bobs like a clown's head.
Let me into your harbor, please,

not because I imagine I love you
but because I'm cold and you
are warm. Simple as that.
Your lighthouse seems delighted

to see me. I'm turning my back
on it now and rowing. I don't
know if you'll be on the beach.
I know how I'll fee if you are.



hans ostrom 2018

Monday, February 16, 2015

"Who Will Teach Us?


"Who taught you to hate yourself"
asked Malcolm X, 5 May 1962, L.A.

I for one little white boy
was taught by U.S. news-culture
(noose-culture) to be afraid of Malcolm X.

Lord, I could not muster up the fear.
Instead the face and words and name
entranced me at age eight. There
was the force, precision, and logic
of prophecy. Often I spoke
the magic words Malcolm X
and Willie Mays to the cool
hall of my mind.

Sure, maybe call it an early encounter
with charisma. But oh it has outlasted
the Kennedy charm, which seemed
like an expensive mechanism.

An imprint that remains from Malcolm X
and those times
is of a fiercely focused, dedicated
life--all the stuff of slough discarded.
He was a virtuoso of humanity.

We haven't learned yet,
especially us whites, how to take in,
accept, and struggle with such love,
such proper, unsentimental love.

For such love cuts through
the vicious, viscous lies
on which the flabby thing, Whiteness,
leans.

Who taught us never, never
to tolerate such truth?
Who taught us to fear such fearlessness,
and to hide ourselves from such seeking?
Who will teach us otherwise?



hans ostrom 2015