Concrete Details

Concrete is abstract:
planes of gray, freeways,
slabs that call forth concepts:
overpasses, underpasses,
onramps, exits, and exchanges.

Wet and soft become
dry and hard. I used to love,
and weary of, mixing it
in a spinning drum. A bucket
of water, twelve shovels-full
of aggregate, three of Portland
cement (and some calcium


chloride in Winter). Then swaggering/
staggering with a barrow full
of wet and heavy--undisciplined
slop headed up a solitary
plank for the forms.


hans ostrom 2020

Bass and Bass

4:32 a.m., can't sleep,
can't stop thinking about
bass and bass. Bass guitar,
bass fishing. I assemble
do-it-yourself-dreams--
a lake where stringed
instruments swim, leap
for bugs while cranking
thudding beats. An

orchestra full
of slime-scaled instruments
playing Debassy's Wildlife
Biology Suite--the
audience gowned out
in mosquito nets and
hip waders. I order

my mind to order
itself: Stop this!
It opens its wide mouth
and laughs, teeth full
of black musical notes.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (5)

Someone said to someone
as they walked by at the appropriate
pandemical remove, "Why
isn't the inactivity more uncontrived?"

The other person replied, "Is that
really what it said?"

As I was already uncontagiously
past them, I had to make up answers:
"Because we're dealing with actors" and
"No, but that's what she said it said."

Anti-social distancing is turning my life
into a French experimental film
from 1977. I'm grateful.


hans ostrom 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

Endodontics

Everyone in the office wears
a mask, except for the receptionist,
who asks for the money. The
endodontist hails from Lebanon
and attacks her profession:
perfect. After a few

hundred x-rays, it begins.
I'm laid back in the literal sense.
A massive multi-headed beetle
hovers over my face. It looks
like it wants to feed my gaping
mouth. A mantis-like machine
approaches to inspect. Drilling
ensues. I become Texas. I scowl.
The doc needles my gums
with more pain juice.

She packs the drilled-out cave
like a smuggler, then heats
plastic to cap the gap. My
well is dry. The doc and the
nurse watch me rise from
the chair like a bear stung
by hornets. I mumble,
"Thank you." (I sense
this is rare). I shamble
out into cold sunshine and
have fun chewing on my
stoned, rubbery lip.


hans ostrom 2020

Anyway, Give It a Try

Socrates or the committee
that built the Temple of Delphi
or someone else said, "Know
thyself." The-philosophy.com
calls this "a moral epistemolo-
gical injunction." A search warrant.
Know thyself: Good luck with that.

It's frequently exhausting just
taking care of oneself, family,
friends, work, pets. Then there's
the community and, in theory,
pleasure. True self-knowledge
is like that vacation you never take.

It's also an illusion, one of the
all-time best. I wonder if
Socrates knew what kind of person
goes around advising other
people, "Know thyself."


hans ostrom 2020                  

From a Diary of the Plague Year (4)

The universe occurs
all over again always
now and then. The bustling
biological fuzz on Earth's
crust crackles. Humans
pursue strategies for hiding
from something they can't
see, a maddening minute
enemy. Other forms
of life--birds, fish--
stay busy with their
evolved tasks and necessary
ambitions. I pretend to draw
a box around it all
and call it Today.


hans ostrom 2020

Woman Standing on Brown Stones

brown stones in garden
sunlight look warm. they're
cold. when she stands on
them butterflies swarm & you
look at her bare feet.

who is she? isn't that
the point--to know her
standing there without
knowing name or story?

instead to eat cabbage soup
in a stinking room & dream
of her remote poise, which
unpredictably gives way
to gasping giggles. you

can barely afford your rent
in Brooklyn or St. Petersburg
& you're in "love" with a woman
who doesn't exist in a garden
you tend in your mind. it
might all work out, who knows?


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (3)

Planting yarrow on a hillside--
glimpsed a lone eagle just overhead.
It locked its wings to an updraft,
parked, scanned. I saw its
head tilt toward me. And the eyes.

I won't say I felt hunted. I will
say I stood up and tried to convey
maximum respect. The bright
white of the bird's head flashed
like snow on the Olympic Range,
also visible today--its sharp
peaks bunched together like a
stone chorus. The eagle

coasted in circles--stiff wind
not more than an obedient
servant. Rotating its body
and wings, it was off to complete
rounds, diagnosing the ground.

Predatory, pristine, supreme,
remote, austere: eagle,
above our clotted fretting
down here.


hans ostrom 2020

Lonely? You're Not Alone

If you've been lonely
your whole life, you're
not alone. If you're lonely
even when you're with
other people, join the crowd.

If you sometimes feel
less lonely when you're
alone, raise your hand
(no one will notice).
Confidentially, I'm alone

here writing this now,
which has turned into then
already. Every so often,
for about 30 seconds or so,
I feel lonely. Feel that old
familiar weight of carrying
my consciousness through
time, across space, in language.

These feelings, like a fly,
buzz around the room a few
times before they stop
flying and die.


hans ostrom 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

From a Diary of the Plague Year (2)

The wind wants to play
today, coming in at all
angles. Clouds look weary,
sagging low, slow, spilling
a few raindrops like a drunk
pulling change out of a pocket.

As to the unnatural world:
people seem humbled by
the pall of the plague, as if
their ambition and certainty
had turned into old castoff toys.

Mainly we seem to be doing
what humans do when not
prodded into social madness:
one foot in front of the other, using
one or many wheels moving things,
caring about and for others,
gathering good information,
wondering how long good sense
will last.


hans ostrom 2020

Exhausted Monuments

Our monuments are weary.
They want to quit their jobs.
They hate fronting for history.
They like birds, rain, sunshine,
and snow because all four
play in the present.

Our monuments want to travel
abroad to meet other monuments.
Some days they just want
to break apart to become
the abstract and liberated
art of rubble.

One monument told me it
simply feels in the way,
heavy, ridiculous. It
stands there shilling
for something people
who have either forgotten
or want to forget what lies
behind the monument,
which wants only to support
birds, darken for rain,
shine for sun, change
shape with snow.


hans ostrom 2020

A Piece of the Moon Again

Drunks lose the sky. At night
they're usually soused and inside.
If outside they don't look up.
They're focused on the ground just
ahead of them. It's moving. They
focus on the cup that runneth
over. Soon their view

shrinks more. It retreats all the way
into the brain, where the brain
looks at itself. When drunks get sober,

their view enlarges. Circles and squared
expand. Slowly. Until one day
the sobering drunk gets back to sky.
The drunk looks up. Eyes and head
don't hurt. Eyes look at stars or
colored clouds, or simply blue
(all blue!), or a piece of moon.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (1)

For the moment plague
appears to us here in headlines,
broadcasts, and rumor. I wonder
if it will visit my lungs soon.
And kill me. My worry spreads

to family, friends, refugees,
homeless ones. By the time
it reaches my minuscule sense
of everyone it dissipates.

For the moment plague
turns gel into a verb and makes me
rub my hands together a lot
like a fly.

For the moment plague's pall
is subtle. Everyone looks
distracted as if they're doing math
problems in their head. Stock
markets stop pretending they're
rational systems. The grotesque
President of the moment
babbles in the high fever
of his stupidity. Crisis crawls
for the moment. It will
get up and start to walk,
to jog, . . . .


hans ostrom March 9 2020

Cicadas and Spider

A cicadian chorus sings
in my circadian sleep. In a dream
I weep and laugh and weep
a little more. I knock on a door.

Who opens it is a spider playing
four violins. "Why, come in,"
says the spider. "You're just in time."
"For what?" I ask.

"For to be yourself, to tap a drum,
to have some have some have
some fun." That's what's left
us in the the end: a chance
at fun, and then . . . .


hans ostrom 2020

Sand

Shapes of accumulated sand
reminded us we live among and are
insconstant forms:
a dune arcs, sags, collapses, reappears,
swells. We're

spending one long shifty afternoon
at a beach. Waves
unload more sand, delivery after
delivery. Land
tries to give it back. Projections

suggest the entire province
soon will be composed of sand.
What is soon? What is
a province? We're delirious

and barefoot. That lump there
used to be a castle. That
ocean there is coming for us.


hans ostrom 2020

I Don't Know What You're Thinking

I don't know what you're
thinking. What are you thinking?
Are you thinking? What is
thinking? Is it a big restaurant
just behind the eyes with light,
noise, and bustling? Is it
automatic electric theater?
Is it language marinated in
instinct? Well, I need a break--

too much thought! But
you go ahead and keep
thinking. Thank you.


hans ostrom 2020

Schrödinger's Dog

Schrödinger's dog sniffs
the outside of the box.
That hound can smell
past quantum nonsense.
It knows exactly
what's inside. And hair
at the top of it shoulders
bristles, electric. 


hans ostrom 2020

Photographs of Kafka

Photos of Kafka
bend the heart a bit.
They make you want
to buy him coffee,
also pastry, and listen
to him tell a joke.

He's slight, his face
is bony, his coat's
too big. He isn't absurd:
The photos mean too much.

You want to say, Come
back, Mr. Kafka, and have
another try. If God knows,
then God knows you've
earned a second chance
with fresh lungs
and time to write.



hans ostrom 2020