What The Trees Mean

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What The Trees Mean

The redwood trees mean I can stop
worrying about how important my work
is. When my toil's results are compost,
redwoods will still be. A manzanita
bush means tenacity. Fire propagates
this species, no kidding. The beech
tree says something about peace. Listen.
Old scraggly scrub-pines report that
not every conifer can be a celebrity.
I just might patrol a leafy avenue
in this city or that, or wander into
a copse, maybe drop into an old forest.
Maybe I'll read more trees, see
what stories they suggest.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Short, Ornery Month

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Short, Ornery Month

Skies got blue-black all
of a sudden: one of February's
traits. Wind behave like a cold
saw. A robin perched on the roof
of something gray, looked chilled
and bewildered: migrating too soon?

Change is difficult or too easy,
slow or too fast. Consider the planet,
hunks o its huge hide constantly
contending. Ask the powerless. They
know about less-than-optimal. Or

interview February in your hometown
and deal with its difficult answers.
Maybe that's why they cut this month
short a few days back then. Maybe indeed
the moon preferred March's attitude.


Copyright February 2010 Hans Ostrom

What Is Happening

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What Is Happening

The universe passes through you, so there's
that to ponder as you wait to get your teeth
drilled or to be told you're not right for
the job for which you're right. Light
form stars they claim are dead settles
on your retinae, goes somewhere, has to.
Then there's the oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon
we process. My friends, we're sieves and filters.
We're right for the job. Life passes through
us and we through it. Atoms maniacally rearrange.
Wind in aspens, wind in hair. Galaxies
spiral as you sit in a chair.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Different Isn't Stupid

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Different Isn't Stupid

Different from you isn't necessarily
stupid and may well be a kind of smart
you'd do well to study, as you study, if
you will study, yourself. Will you?

Hey, your judge-o-meter's really
wound up--too many rpm's, reactions
per moment. Do you smell smoke? Hey,
consider your own patch of ground:

not perfect, yes? Maybe it is even
stupid in someone's eyes. Have you
noticed the wise? They judge--well,
judiciously. Reticently. Come now,

let us speak of what we know,
and of how little we know.
That's better. That's not stupid.
That is better.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Clear A Place For Good

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Clear a Place For Good

Make room for something good to happen. Clear
a place--there, perhaps, on a purple divan; or
here, on a warm, flat rock. Yes, of course,
nothing good may arrive, in which case you

may occupy the place yourself and call it good.
You may watch as something good happens in that
space you just vacated. It doesn't always work
this way. Still, make some room. Some room for good.



Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Latino/Hispanic Writers

Here is a link to a useful site about Latino/Latina/Hispanic writers:


Latino/Hispanic

Johnny Cash's Birthday

Johnny Cash would have been 78 today--an amusing number to me because I first heard his recordings via 78 rpm records my father brought home from a saloon in the High Sierra. A carpenter and stone mason by day, my father took a second job tending bar, and when it was time to replace records in the jukebox, he brought the discards home--including the 78's of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen." Young as I was, I sensed immediately the uniqueness of Cash's voice, style, and persona. I still can't think of another artist who occupies a niche between African American delta music, Appalachian folk music, electrified country music of the 1950s, and Memphis rockabilly so originally and so forcefully; there was also more than a hint of reggae and ska in what he produced sometimes (he owned a house in Jamaica). I also think he had a great ear and eye for the poetry of popular lyrics, and he seemed unamused by lyrics from the ultra-commercial pop and Nashville machines. He did, however, like to sell records himself; no doubt about that. A link to "his" site:

Johnny Cash

Stellar Nucleosynthesis

Below is a link to an obituary of Geoffrey Burbidge, who helped to define stellar nucleosynthesis. Apparently, Burbidge did not favor the Big Bang Theory but instead speculated that the universe has always existed.

Burbidge

Roger Bobo on the Tuba; or, Apropros of Bobo

It's a glum, soggy day in the Pacific Northwest--after some days of glorious sunshine. One student said, "I don't even want to discuss the weather."

Another student--not apropos of the weather--recommended the music of Roger Bobbo, who plays the tuba.

I found a video of Bobo playing on the Tonight Show, with Carson. Carson was interesting that way; he'd have unexpected acts on.

Anyway, Bobo's rendition of "Carnival In Venice" is a sunny one:

Carnival of Venice--Bobo

Poetry Is Alive and Well

Here is a link to a nice essay by Donald Hall, "Death to the Death of Poetry"

Hall on poetry

I don't know the extent to which other nations/cultures engage in hand-wringing about the death of poetry, but I suspect American hand-wringing on this issue is more prevalent.

Poetry From Captain Beefheart

I have to (well, I don't really have to) admit I'm partial to eccentric entertainers like Captain Beefheart, chiefly because of the off-beat wit, but also because they seem to resist the slots and categories of "culture." Another name Captain Beefheart has used is Don Van Vliet, is that right?

Here is a link to some poems by Captain Beefheart:

Beefheart poems

America's War Criminals

A friend sent a link to an article in Salon about America's war criminals:

War Criminals

Community Colleges and Poetry

. . . And here is a link to U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan's poetry project, which includes work with community colleges:

Kay Ryan/Community Colleges

I must now hail Sierra College, the community college I attended way back when. Thanks especially to several fine English teachers there and one fine philosophy teacher, from whom I took a two-semester history of philosophy course.

Library of Congress Site: Black History Month

Here is a link to a "page" on the U.S. Library of Congress site that describes a variety of projects, exhibits, and archives connected to Black History Month:

Library of Congress

Southeastern Kansas

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Southeastern Kansas


Grains of agrarian
patience sway, shimmer,

shall become bread
of memory. Clouds

have purchased sky.
Prairie is lightning-

lacerated. Grassy
hills take as long

to curve as they will.
Expanse fascinates.



Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

A Musical Evening With Langston Hughes

A Musical Evening With Langston Hughes, featuring Awilda Verdejo.

Great Site for International Poetry

Here's a link to a fine site for contemporary poetry around the world:


International Poetry Web

Once there, you may simply select a country from the drop-down menu, go to that page, and find dozens of poets.

Great stuff.

Say There's A Ship

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Say There's A Ship

Say there's a ship we can take out
on the sea of our lives. Say we can
cast nets and lines and thus retrieve
sources of regret, despair, haul them
on board, apologize, repair--make things
right. Tell it so we can find

unrecoverable people out there. They stand
or sit in boats, close enough to see,
to hail. Make it so that ocean's not just
time or loss, memory or change, failure or
death. We know that sort of ocean well.

Talk about the joy we'll feel. Describe
the laughter, redemptive weeping, songs
and delight. Now a harder part: tell us
how to get there. Please tell us how
to go down to that ship, get on.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Hughes and Hurston on Haiti

Haiti's being in the news, to understate things awfully much, has reminded me that two Harlem Renaissance authors, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, developed a great interest in that nation.

An anthropologist as well as a fiction-writer, Hurston wrote the study: Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. It was reissued in 2008.

Hughes wrote a play, Troubled Island, which concerns the Haitian rebel leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who helped defeat the army Napoleon had sent to Haiti and who later became emperor of Haiti. His dates are 1758-1806. Later, the composer William Grant Still and Hughes (as librettist) collaborated on the opera, Troubled Island.

Evening Hatch

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Evening Hatch

An evening hatch of gnats rose from the river
in a cloud. One gnat flew to a blue bluff,
landed there, pushed against infinite,
immovable stone mass. The gnat

fell away and down toward a pool,
out of which erupted a rainbow trout,
which snatched and swallowed the gnat.

I will have had less effect on things than
this gnat. It's good to meditate on that.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom