Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Monday, October 30, 2023
They Teach Us to Adapt to Them
Crows, those shadow-shouters,
seem to live in towns amongst thick trees.Out of their twig-walled cottages,
here they come, gliding, flapping,
bouncing, yelling. They're quiet
during almost all their hours,
but their noise makes you forget
that--like a ratchet-voiced hermit
who bickers with imaginary
invaders, scaring hikers. Crows
maneuver us into adapting to them.
So many creatures do. Given
the billions of us, they all have to.
hans ostrom 2023
Knuckles
Splendid that the word
in English should begin with K,hard like bone. Make a fist.
There they are, those knobs
in a slanting line, fingers
bolted to them. Make a list
of all the species they knew
before they went to work
for us. People put rings
on fingers, shape and paint
nails, read palms, shake
hands, caress with soft
finger-pads. They might
even tattoo something
sinister near the knuckles,
which no matter what keep
working shifts in the grip
factory, uncelebrated, scraped.
Rub the knuckles of one
hand with the other hand's
fingers: a gesture of thanks.
hans ostrom 2023
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Monday, October 23, 2023
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Friday, October 20, 2023
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Bayou Blues
Sulfur yellow sky
seals in obese,humid air.
Just sitting on
our slumped porch,
us, still we sweat creeks.
A sick boat motor
coughs over there
on the bayou canal.
A sedan drives up.
Looks like a Fed car.
Our neighbors scatter
like water drops
on a griddle. We
have to breathe
this air. We have
to breathe this
here hot, wet air.
hans ostrom 2023
Orb Spider In Its Nest
I saw a a dark, spotted
orb-weaver spider
suspended in the center
of its flat, woven net,
presiding over its life.
I leaned in and spoke
softly to it. The spider slowly
raised its two foremost
legs--a casual double-wave.
Like moonlight glowing
on an old eucalyptus tree,
like an unsheltered man
sleeping on a city grate,
the spider and its awareness
cannot affect the future.
They're almost nothing,
just like me. And yet the
spider and the man and
the glowing tree, and just one
night's moonlight should
count as crucial. They exist
& their gestures suggest we
should care.
suspended in the center
of its flat, woven net,
presiding over its life.
I leaned in and spoke
softly to it. The spider slowly
raised its two foremost
legs--a casual double-wave.
Like moonlight glowing
on an old eucalyptus tree,
like an unsheltered man
sleeping on a city grate,
the spider and its awareness
cannot affect the future.
They're almost nothing,
just like me. And yet the
spider and the man and
the glowing tree, and just one
night's moonlight should
count as crucial. They exist
& their gestures suggest we
should care.
hans ostrom 2023
Photo: spotted orb-weaver spider.
Interruptions
You're a minor Beat Movement poet
in 1961, and you get up to leave a barin Berkeley, California, but the bartender
doesn't know who you are, and he yells,
"You forgot to pay!"
No doubt you're not a minor Beat Movement
poet, and it's 2023 or 2122, and you lift
a first spoon of homemade soup
toward your mouth, but someone
raps on your door like a monstrous
woodpecker on a beetle-infested pine.
You're anybody somewhere sometime,
soaring in new love but now brought down
to sickening earth by the buckshot of
betrayal. Or required brain surgery
shunts your rolling-along-all-right life
to a rusty side-track where
you live in a fog of recovery.
Yep, life's a series of interruptions
interrupted by Death. Sometimes
the shock is so great you and your
family have to become refugees,
who huddle and pray on a rubber
boat slammed by cold waves.
hans ostrom 2023
Love and Toilet Paper
Somebody once asked Johnny Cash
what the secret to a successful marriagewas--his second had worked out well.
In his tremulous baritone,
Johnny answered, "Two
bathrooms." Once upon
an era, a lucky couple had two
bathrooms, one downstairs,
one upstairs, where bedrooms
were. One night around midnight,
the husband noticed the upstairs
bathroom had no toilet paper.
He trudged downstairs
to where a storeroom lay,
and where an awakened cat
looked at him the way a general
looks at a private. The man
apologized to the furry general,
fetched rolls of toilet paper,
and took them upstairs.
In the morning, the wife said,
"I noticed you got us some toilet
paper in the middle of the night.
That is love," she added.
hans ostrom 2023
Friday, October 13, 2023
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Monday, October 9, 2023
Sunday, October 8, 2023
Saturday, October 7, 2023
Friday, October 6, 2023
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Talk in Cardiff
Big crowded restaurant next
to Mermaid Quay & my wifesteps out to take a call & I
focus on total sound of voices
talking--a liquid aural sculpture
of what bubbles, bursts, and flows
out of minds onto tongues & lips
& teeth. Fricatives and sibilants,
bumped rhythms, syncs and
overlaps, high-lows, quick stops,
clicks, loud cackles, the symphonic
babble of us. These folks
talk about, these eager eaters
paroled from homes, & they talk
to talk, as talkers do and must
& it's just good to listen
to the rich chopped salads of sounds
severed from sense--a dense
space, a tide. My wife returns
& I say, "What was she calling
about?" She says, "Oh, she
just wanted to chat."
At the British Museum
In truth, crowds of the living
interest me more todaythan the British Museum's
superbly lit and curated
tablets, weapons, hordes,
clocks, and deities.
A constant flow
of self-selected people
moves toward and away from
the table where I sip coffee
and scribble. A Chinese
mother breast-feeds her
child in the cafe. Teenagers
from every culture rankle
at the forced parental trudge
through these tombs (one
young woman sees my
notebook & pen and smiles:
another writer). Here come
the tall, the old, the short, the
chaired, the sexy, the enwrapped,
the rapt, the aching-arthritic,
the dazzled, the done-in,
the spongy voluptuous--
the everybody from everywhere
who take charge of idiom,
clothes, beliefs, behavior,
and most importantly:
secret thoughts, quick
connections, living impulse--
those dear seeds of civilizations.
London, 2023
A brisk but polite flow
of people on sidewalks, in cars.Yelling and honking--rare.
Women everywhere, from
everywhere: how splendid.
A sturdiness of old kept-up
buildings--like thick, healthy
urban bones. Conversations
that include listening and evidence.
Reading, valued. Few symptoms
of sick rage. A relative
freedom from guns, which now
hold American well being hostage--
a pistol to the national head.
A certain lust for gardens
and the farms beyond. A troubling
dearth of birds. Except for
pigeons, who have become
full citizens (I love them). An
adequacy, at least, of bookstores.
Calm news-readers, free
from pressurized speech
and false drama. Loquacious
cab-drivers with comic schticks.
A healthy getting-on-with-it.
"Hello, Goodbye, Swindon"
Hello, Swindon, where one
train passenger gets off,gray clouds let a shaft
of sunlight through, and aluminum
chairs are perforated like
sheets of postage stamps.
The detrained woman sits
in one of these, puts
an allergy sprayer in both
nostrils, combs her gray
hair, sighs, and waits.
How interesting it must be,
I think, to grow up and live
in Swindon--in any place
without famine, war, and other
acute violence. The train
keeps going through tunnels
of green trees and brush,
as if landscape were a private
matter. Breaks in the vegetative
wall show hedgerows
and pastures (the discipline
of farms). Guernsey cows
give green grass a close
reading. Sheep gather
in fluffy, passive gangs. Dark
green, black-branched
oaks give off a Druid vibe.
Goodbye, Swindon.
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