As We Build

Two dime-sized yellow-green butterflies

copulate on a pine board we

nailed at an angle to brace a partition. 

They're connected like duelists

about to pace: one board's edge,

the other perpendicular on the broader

plane. Their antennae do not so much

as twitch: wings rigid as steel, eyes

like polished obsidian pebbles, placidly

glazed. Amid slamming hammer blows,

electric saw scream, and sawdust storm,

they're lost in the depth and breadth 

of regeneration. As we raise another wall,

it's sap-wet ribs seem to bless with shadows

in a geometric pattern these two insects

abstracted in their act and moment. Around

us: loafs of Sierra Nevada mountains,

dark green with pines and firs. Canyon air

is thick with cicadas, dragonflies, bees, gnats,

and other bugs--corpuscles of energy whose

names I'll never know. Swollen knuckles

of thunderhead fists crowd an eastern sky.

There's a humid, thick, barely audible humming

of summer's abundance, of bright boulders

ringing with heat, a hum of hot southern air,

of soaked clouds about to blow up. Hammering

stops, saw stops: we break for water. The 

procreating butterflies relax. Their four 

antennae shift slightly as if nudged by breath

of a whisper. They shake the drowse 

of loving death from their rejuvenated

wings, rise and fly and depart this half-framed

human dwelling, and they join the inflamed air. 

circa 1981/2021 hans ostrom

Funeral in Los Angeles

Cancer took her quickly. Now

cars of her procession

move like dark cells through

traffic of the Los Angeles Freeway,

a daily purgatory.

A silver military jet

becomes a needle of glare 

that tugs a thread of chalky

vapor. The plane cruises

above faraway suede hills

well ahead of its sound.

And the family in its sealed,

air conditioned autos is driven

ahead of understanding.

A lavender dolphin, anchored

like a dirigible above a used-car

lot, smirks as they pass.

Her daughter runs a finger over

the upholstery. She thinks,

"It's just upholstery."

And at the cemetery, too,

everything has become

only what it is: asphalt, grass,

trees, people--the landscape

of a children's book.

Where they bury her,

upright headstones are forbidden.

Marble, granite, and brass must

be inlaid so tractor mowers

may keep grass immaculate.

Beneath a canopy near the dug

grave, the daughter looks toward

those old brown distant hills.

She wonders--as her relatives

whisper quietly and cry--why

the world seems to have been 

completely prepared for

the death of her mother. 

circa 1979/2021 hans ostrom

Lane Change

Late night in a Central Valley

California city, where farm air

sniffs neon. Blacktop, moist after

rain, gleams. Phosphorescent lamps

and traffic signals hang in cheery

gloom. Everybody's left the party.

I drift the silver-green Chevy

over to a lane for 

       LEFT OR U TURN ONLY and

stop.

A Ford rolls up in another lane,

obeys a red light, engine grumbling

in that Ford way. (This happened

long ago, when people befriended cars

and trucks.) I see the mouth

of the driver, a young woman, singing

the song my radio's singing. (We used

car radios then.) She turns her head

and, singing, smiles through two windows,

turns back and sees

        GREEN

and off with an automatic-transmission

(such things mattered then)

start goes her gunned Mustang

(me in my Camaro), wheels spitting

water and grit--gone. Just gone. Now

I sing the song. It liked her 

better. I murder it. The

         RED

light winks into a green arrow.

How lovely, an Imagist poem. 

Awake, the Camaro lurches,

goes through engine-crescendos

as I manage gas pedal brake pedal

clutch pedal stick-shift steering & a certain

sad projection of Camaro cool . . .

. . . to follow the Ford would have

been just plain wrong. "On a number

of levels," as the academics (I was 

trying to become one) used to say

in that former farm-town that grows

research. Learning her name, hearing

her voice in talk and song, inducing

her laughter--yes, a belly laugh--. . .

not wrong. Not possible. I turn

not around but sufficiently LEFT

as never to see the Ford the woman

again, at least according to my poet's

sense of statistical probability (everyone

but me carried a thick calculator then).

Sad and lonely, I stride from car

to bad buggy bungalow door and say

No not sad and lonely but alive and

the washed air smells fine and I might

have a glass of red wine.

hans ostrom circa 1975/2021

She Returns to the Farm

          (with memories of Tom Rickman)

It is raining. There are apples.

It is. There are. Apples, rain, mud,

land. Land not built on. Yet. At 

night, such quiet, much quiet,

too much . . . .

The reckless ones died early.

The cautious ones grew old and died.

The orchard grew into a farm, 

which grew into an operation. 

Thus orchard, a young grafted

tree,  became a mature

producer. Which became an

autonomous hybrid banyan/apple

tree walking around the place,

planting itself. She

does/doesn't understand. 

It is raining. There are apples.

The money is good. She can't stay. 

hans ostrom 2021

Jealous Desert

walking in a desert

looking for, smelling for,

water, honey, and home--

the desert is home--

look, there's a bone

that once was part

of one who walked

here: here goes on

as it went even when

water covered it.

walking the desert.

it is jealous of water. 

hans ostrom 2021