Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Procession of Cats

Like a long silver ribbon,
the path from the moon
stretches to Earth tonight. And
down the path come the cats,
striding with their lazy lope.

Thousands of them, leaving
their lunar lair, returning
to this ground with moonlight
in their round unblinking eyes.

Arriving, they take their feline
time to scatter to homes,
hideouts, forests, plains,
jungles, mountains, and alleys.

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Cat's Eyes Revery

I left sleep's velvet shack,
walked across a field of dew-
doused feathers, arrived
at two identical round ponds,
both glowing pale green
like a cat's eyes. I

then picked up a couple spongy 
pale yellow orbs, palm-sized,
tossed one into one pond,
the other into the other.
They floated to the centers
of the ponds and turned dark.

The nearby forest, black
in shadow, purred loudly,
vibrating my ribs, cranium,
and feet. At my back came
a cold rough breeze. 

hans ostrom 2024

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

Monday, August 15, 2022

Overnight at Haypress Creek

We hiked into the deep ravine
of a quick, cold creek, High Sierra.
Found a place to camp and caught
a couple trout to eat. Evening:

lit a small fire to cook the fish
and heat some beans. Ate, then
doused the fire and slipped
into sleeping bags. Night:

wilderness became immense,
swallowed any sense of self-importance.
A world of creatures came alive,
bears and bobcats and bats,
deer, raccoon, rodents, and night-bugs.

Stirring in the brush, snapped sticks,
owl-hoots and the haunting yips
of coyotes coming through the canyon.
Walls of tall conifers turned black,
their furred edges outlined against
a star-choked sky, where meteors
scratched glow-trails close and far away.

Fatigue smothered awe. We slept....
Woke to a rotated sky and a risen moon
bearing down on us like one mad headlight
from a nightmare. Cricket choruses,
unceasing. Freshest air filling lungs.
And the creek: talking, talking, telling
tales of time we could never comprehend.

hans ostrom 2022

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Breathing in Blue Lunar Light

He had intended 
to seize the day.
Then night came.
Day slipped away.
He was relieved. 

Night seized him. 
Hot winds and nausea. 
He didn't believe what
he knew or know
what he believed.

Waking, midnight, he
saw blue lunar light
that mellowed air,
turned worries  slight.
He breathed. And breathed. 


hans ostrom 2021


Friday, March 9, 2018

Chewing Moon

As I reached for the moon,
it shrank to the size of my hand.
Then it turned into a disc
no thicker than a sandwich.

Coincidentally, I took two
bites out of it. The texture:
that of sugar granules.
Taste: smoky lemon.

The moon in my hand bled
dark green where my teeth
had seized lunar flesh. Stung
by self-rebuke, I put the moon

back where I had found it, or
almost. It healed in its orbit.


hans ostrom 2018

Friday, February 23, 2018

A Visit to the Sun Building

Why are you here? asked
the moon people in the sun building.
By mistake, I replied, adding,
Anyway, hello. They said

if I were to stay,
I would have to conform.
A tempting offer. But no,
for I saw there already

things that rankled. After
my departure, I walked
under invisible stars
and put money in the cardboard
coffer of a street musician
who sang of asteroids.


hans ostrom 2018

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Dialectic

Mother, gather. Father,
proffer. Mother, other.
Father, farther. Mother,
smoother. Father, rather.

Mother, feather. Father,
weather. Mother, mystery.
Father, factory. Mother,

whisper woe, oh
no. Father falter slow.
Father go, gone.
Ma, Pa, dead,

dust, as they
must, as we
must, just so
very soon. And

the moon here
from the first,
once of Earth,
round and round.


hans ostrom

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

If You Want It To Be

The moon is as big as you want it to be.
Even hope can be sad if you want it to be.

Addiction will peel your brain away. The
needle's a gun if you want it to be.

It can be early, if you want it to be.
The book is all yours, if you want it to be.

Like an avalanche, I regret everything.
This is an apology if you want it to be.

It's all a puzzle if you want it to be,
and this is a clue.  If you want it to be.




hans ostrom 2017

Monday, April 6, 2015

Kettle of Ma & Pa

Mother, gather. Father,
proffer. Mother, other.
Father, farther. Mother,
smother. Father, wrather.


Mother, feather. Father,
weather. Mother, mystery.
Father, factory. Mother,
whisper woe, Mother

know oh no. Father,
falter slow, Father
go gone. Ma, Pa,
dead, dust, as they

must, as we too must
just so very soon. And
yes, yes, the moon here
from the first, round & round.


hans ostrom 2015


Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Lost Characters

A dock at a lake at night:

the moon. We’ll talk there—

yes: they will have

decided to send us there.


We can’t plan what to say,

and we have no author.

But on the dock, we’ll be

and, being, we’ll know

then what to say.


hans ostrom 2014

Thursday, December 12, 2013

I Have Seen

I have seen the sun
and I fear the calamities.
I have seen the sun
and I seek no remedies.

I have seen the moon
and I've kissed the cool air.
I have seen the moon
in its jeweled lair.

I have seen the stars,
mostly in books, alas.
I have seen the stars:
the avant-garde of mass.


hans ostrom 2013

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Moon Visits Altered History


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A headline in the Tacoma News Tribune two days ago read, "Moon Visits Altered History," and for an instant I misread "Visits" as being a verb and "Altered" as an adjective, so that the headline seemed to be about a journey the moon had taken.


Moon Visits Altered History


Orbit became a wearisome groove, a tedious
channel. Sun played the same old carom-shots
with rays, and just below, sad plants and creatures
marked the days. A bored moon unclipped itself
from gravity to visit an altered history.

It visited moon-museums in the gallaxy,
drank with disappointed asterioids who'd
aspired to be moons, interviewed multi-mooned
planets to ask how they kept their lunar
calendars straight. The moon was gone for a

month, exactly. No one but a few astronomers
and surfers noticed. The moon came back
to trudge its orbit like a mule, plowing
time, spinning space into legend.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Moon Poems


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(image: Swiss cheese, the chief component of the moon, in spite of astronomers' and astronauts' protestations to the contrary)
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Not that you asked, but my favorite moon-poem is W.H. Auden's "This Lunar Beauty," chiefly because of the rhythm, which subtly echoes that of Jon Skelton's poetry.

Other good moon-poems include "Under the Harvest Moon," by Carl Sandburg, famous Swedish American; "Autumn Moonlight," by Matsuo Basho [how many haikus have a moon-image in the them, I wonder?] ; "Length of Moon," by Arna Bontemps; "The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again," by Richard Brautigan [I think we have a winner in the title-competition]; "The Moon Was But a Chin of Gold," by Emily Dickinson [I think we have a winner in the comparison-competition, and what a shock that's it's D: never mess with Ms. D.]; "Blood and the Moon," by W.B. Yeats; and "And the Moon and the Stars and the World," by Charles Bukowski.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sleeping Seaside













Sleeping Seaside


The sea can give only so much. It shrugs
tides inland as far as possible. Then its
conscience, the moon, urges caution. What's
left behind on strands looks broken or worn.
Anyway it's exiled from origin and function:
a cracked shell, a driftwood plank.
A receding tide's a kind of regret.

Hearing the sound of surf all night erodes
the will's high bank. That's when a tide
of sleep advances. That's when you wade
in the water, child, and shrug off the day.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Desert Tale










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Whew! I'm trying to keep up with this National Poetry Month poem-a-day regime, but it's not as easy as it looks.


Desert Tale

A stone rings with heat in the desert. A
lizard answers the stone, speaking in tongue.
On the other end of the line is the Sun.
After ringing off, the lizard does push-ups,
then runs away to tell other reptiles
all the hot gossip. After sundown,

a coyote lopes out of a gulch, uses
the same stone, which is still warm,
to call the Moon, which wishes all
the mammals well, predator and prey
alike. After talking with the Moon,
the coyote yip-yips contentedly
across cooling sand.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Poem In The Air













Poem In The Air

Oh, Lord, no--not another moon-poem. Oh,
yes, poetry's tethered invisibly to the moon,
which is invisibly tethered to this terrain.
Technically, the moon's not permanent,
but compared to me, it is. I walked under it

tonight--my only option, really. The moon
wasn't quite full, so it looked pinched, and
while I stared, an impulse stole my pen
and notebook and sent another moon-poem
into bright, brief, bulbous orbit. I should

have known better than to look up and stare.
I should have had my eye on the poem in the air.