Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Alpine Lake

Sometimes the lake takes sunlight,
turns it into a deep blue
that might make you leave your mouth
open slightly like a child
just awake from a nap.

On some leaden summer days,
the lake quits moving, stays
so still it turns frog green.
Sluggish fish nap. Anglers
take their tackle-boxes home.
Giant bugs come and dance
on the water. At night?

At night the lake puts its colors
in an old drawer. It hums tunes
and talks to raccoons and owls
and hiding water fowls.

In Winter the lake turns white
with ice and snow--becomes
stationery from 1925 on which
you scribble pleas to Spring. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Late Bloomer

The symmetrical mound
of purple chrysanthemums has bloomed.
Such a restrained flower--
signaling Fall like a lovely
but modest actuarial checking
her calendar. And the bees,

the bees, greedy for nectar,
hover--then attach themselves
to purple and got to work,
with their whole bodies,
to extract, as if they sensed
an urgency in the air.

hans ostrom 2023

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Pacific Flyway

Last night, 165, 000 birds
flew over this city. Their highway
of air's called The Pacific Flyway.

Ceaseless wings working,
black eyes shining, uncanny
navigation sending signals....

These birds from various species
have no clue how brave they are,
do not have our concept, courage.

They just do what they must do
while we count and measure
in homes and leisure down here.

A few of these birds stopped by
in our garden this Spring & Summer.
Sampled water, suet, seeds, bugs; rested,

sang--maybe picked up grass and twigs
for the summer home. This thought
brings warmth, like holding briefly

in a cupped hand a bird before it flies.


hans ostrom

Friday, March 13, 2020

Regarding Planted Trees

The trees I've planted in several
locales on this West Coast
have their own lives. They
must manage sap, paint leaves,
then cast them off, then more
leaves, blossoms, plums, apples . . .
Birds and insects consider
these trees to be airports

and resorts for summer avian
tourists. From a window
I can see the sensualist fig
tree spread its branches
voluptuously. It produces
shamelessly extravagant leaves.
Months from now it will let
figs swell, harden, soften
lasciviously. Thank God 
I planted that tree, I murmur
sometimes to myself, quietly.


hans ostrom 2020

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Scene Blue and Green

The scene is blue and green.
Blue like shadow indigo.
Green like pine and fir tree
boughs. Blue and green cover

tall roughly rounded mountains,
ravines between. Air
is almost too fresh to be
other than cherished. The day

is cold and gray. You are cold,
not gray. You see a mist-fog
rise from a quick narrow river
into mountains and ravines,
into green and blue. You think,

the scene is not officially
beautiful, commodity pretty,
but to you superb. You feel

the scene insinuating sadness,
wielding power. Grief
and irrevocable loneliness
seem involved. You
want to go in and get warm
but not enough to leave
the scene of seeing blue and green.


hans ostrom 2020

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Leopard Slug

Why hadn't you seen that kind of slug
before?  Limus Maximus. Irresponsible
of you, really. Nutmeg
speckles on a pond-gray body that looks like
a liquid bean pod. Of course
there were the pale, knobbed antennae
for listening to quick
tunes on Slug Radio.

Across an expanse of concrete
moved the mollusk, not a crawl
but a patient glide. You didn't have
all day to watch it and anyway
too much slug observation
creates a strange pathetic mood.


hans ostrom 2018

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Lizard and Person

A lizard springs out of always and scurries
perpendicular to level across a hot face
of tan granite. Stops. Stares at a person
who stares back with perception larded
with knowledge, free association,
and mind's always frenzied business.

The lizard focuses, grins thinly, sprints
into a crack between boulders, and settles
into shadow to digest a fly. The person's
mind is beset by why.


hans ostrom 2018

Monday, February 20, 2017

Ferocious Form

Is it art or is it nature? Yes.
Starlings' startling flock
masses, fractalates, twists,
and surges in anti-patterns.

Each bird's both medium
and member of the troupe-
image. It is a ferocity of
form, undulating in the afternoon.



hans ostrom 2017

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

I Demand to Know

A dragonfly, wearing standard-issue
lead goggles, downshifts its wings,
which when still look like foggy
cracked windows. Resting,

this dragonfly pulses. Its curved
blue tail befriended a scorpion
once during a vacation in Mexico.

I demand to know
what this dragonfly thinks.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, April 29, 2013

The Planet Is Hooked

The fish are getting high
on our pharmaceuticals. Perch
take anti-anxiety meds
prescribed by our sewage
and runoff & they swim
like hell. We like to share.
Gulls smoke our clouds of
junk, bears chew through plastic,
and clams can't find the calcium
anymore because of our acid trips.
The planet's on our street now.
We'll sell it anything.



hans ostrom 2013