Detectives

 (homage to Rex Stout and Georges Simenon)

Crime disrespects. It exploits

routine. It is impolite, time-

consuming, and distracting.

Grudgingly, the good detective

identifies those who

should have known better,

most especially the entitled.

Intelligent cooking; sufficient

rest; optional, moderate

consumption of alcohol and

tobacco; solitude; reflection—

these are worth preserving,

even if it means working

for a living, extracting

folly and vice from the milieu.

Hence Jules Maigret and Nero Wolfe,

who would rather be left

alone but are drawn into prose

by their creators, into frays by

fate, necessity, duty. Efficient

plots spring from good manners.

Whatever takes one away from

reading, dining, conversation,

solitude, repose, or—however modest

it may be-one’s enclave must be criminal.

Good manners and good detection

don’t belong to social class but

come from a certain strength of mind.

If only everyone would think things through.

Everyone doesn’t; therefore, detection

is called for, is restoration of balances, is

a bother to be concluded quickly.

hans ostrom 1999-2021

Writer's Sky

a small moleskin notebook

exhumed itself

from a mound of scribbling--

the soft cover sky blue--

except with lavender 

lurking, teasing through.

it reminded scribbler me

of a summer Sierra Nevada

sky on certain days (no

days are certain): cloudless--

a sky that seemed too

blue and weirdly made me

yearn prospectively, wanting

never to leave some vague

paradise in my mind--

known, never visited. 

I recall staring as if sky

were painted like a vast ceiling

above pine trees. and then, yes,

I dropped the gaze, moved on to work

for wages--dust and heat--

pounding nails, digging dirt,

wheeling mortar; & after work

sleeping off a migraine 

in a dark basement,

getting up, sweat dried to shirt,

& scratching in a notebook. 

hans ostrom 2021

Forest Floor

forested canyon, sierra

nevada--we walked

among conifer columns

standing in living lithe

patience. our booted feet

landed quietly on annual

layers of pine needles,

each level a different color

of time, light tan on top,

and a darkening all the way

down to black fusion 

with soil, reabsorption--

perhaps a resurrection 

with water up, back up into

tree through root and cambrium,

bough, cone, seed, pollen--

or needle again, shaking

green in wind, staying

still in snow. 

hans ostrom 2021

House Sparrows in June

house sparrow--chest

dusted rose--lands on a line,

faces west, sings a languid,

bluesy thing, a call, a tune,

a testimony,

also a satire of communicating

wires and the rest of our mess.

a second sparrow lands--

birds beside themselves. 

more singing, sewed

together as dusk grows

lemony, then orange.

the first bird stops

singing and grooms

the second: time

soon to nest, close

up eyes, rest singing

throat and tongue--

one more day

one more day gone. 

hans ostrom 2021