Showing posts with label sun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sun. 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

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Out of Our Way, Please

A small electric light behind me,
a merest proton echo of the sun--
and so my shadow leads me,
but I am in the way of where 
I ought to go, as I move down
a corridor at midnight, fretting. 

It's almost day now
and nearly when Earth spins
around to get out of its way,
and lets the Big Light bring
its rays to nourish everything
that grows and every mind that knows,
and every mind should want to know.

Oh, come now, all of us and everyone
with our tiny twisted prejudice, our petty
staggering away from proven ways to know,
our sad attachments to cold cadaverous
puppeteers: Let's at long last get
out of our own way. Let's not block
the light that lets us know that we
and every other human are essentially
the same on this our spinning planet. 
That we are "the people," and no other. 


hans ostrom

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

October

It was my father's favorite month,
tourists having evaporated. Time to
hunt a bit, when dark oak trees
detonated clouds of orange
in the evergreen Sierra mass.

October at the college,
ritual ivy going gold
to keep illusions alive &
the syllabus I sweated over
in August seeming to cruise--
as long as I, like a mechanic,
tinkered, replaced parts,
oiled students' rusting interest
with adjustments, listened
for the tell-tale whine.

October: darkness demands
more time. No bargaining allowed.
I fall in love again with sunlight,
hoping she will have me back
again, late in Spring.

hans ostrom 2022

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

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

Friday, February 10, 2017

Plain as Day

"As plain as day," they say.
That's not very plain.
Revelations of sun's light
bewilder much more than
those of the moon's, which
is plainly a universal blue kiss.




hans ostrom 2-17

Monday, November 23, 2015

Cows, Sun Loves You




The several stomachs of a cow brew
bilious cud out of grass and grain.
Excretion follows in due time
as cows create sweet brown mortar
that dries into thick discs.

Cattle consider and consider,
all day. They earned their Ph.D.s
in Bovinity. The sun created
them. The sun loves them.



hans ostrom 2015




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