You Are Here

 YOU ARE HERE

say maps in museums,

parks, and zoos. You

let your fretting mind

go too far out today.

It strode out on a road

to imagined disaster.

It shook its fist

at doom clouds

overhead. It didn't

let your lungs

take a single easy

breath. Bring it back.

Arm in arm, walk

your mind to a settled

space. A present place.

Make it rest. Let it

look at ground or

stones or grass

right in front of it.

In your body, mind.

In your mind, body.

Tell body, tell it:

YOU ARE HERE.

hans ostrom 2024

Terse Ballad

Hello, you.

Entrez vous.
Look so fine.
Want some wine?

I've spent years
trapped in fears.
How 'bout you?
You seem blue.

Your eyes glisten.
I will listen.
Talk some more.
You don't bore.

Friends so long,
right or wrong.
Stay here, do.
I'll cook for you.

The world's bad:
Why we're sad.
Here you are,
come so far.

Think of how
to survive Now.
Later waits,
dealing fates.

Sure, let's hug.
I'm a lug.
Let's kiss, too.
Me and you.

hans ostrom 2024

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Birds at Twilight

A black murmuration

of starlings surged like a pepper
storm, shifting shapes
against a pallid blue sky at dusk.

And a slow
procession of flying crows
crossed just above
us, a little crowd of corvids

flapping casually
toward a roost in a fir tree.
We wondered
about the hedge sparrows

hunkering down,
and where do juncos nest?
At twilight, birds
move. They migrate from

light to dark.
We find we're rewarded
when we watch
them as often as we can.

hans ostrom 2024

"Lighthouse," by Roger Illsley (Lyrics: Hans Ostrom, Music: Roger Illsley)

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Wind Advisory

No, a "wind advisory" does

not mean a meteorologist
makes suggestions to wind
about its breezy business.

Here it means driven winds
coming East off the volcanically inclined
Cascade Mountains into easily
offended Puget Sound,

which usually hosts Pacific
winds from West, warm. Something
tonight will rattle, bang, or both
outside this dwelling. We

never can predict what. We'll
listen to the ragged rhythm,
the knocks and ticks, not get
up, wake to debris-filled dawn.

hans ostrom 2024

Reflected Reflections

Lamplight ricochets

off a bit of foil, enters
two eyes, appears in a
brain, in a mind.

Sunlight softly shines
through and on a window,
where two eyes see
themselves in a failnt face.

Here are mirrors and eyes,
illuminated blindness. Skies.
Wet heat in a gleaming greenhouse
rises. A reflecting mind apprises.

hans ostrom 2024

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"For Librarians," by Hans Ostrom

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Seagul, Hawk, and Here We All Are

In a pounding but warm rainstorm,

I dropped off the weekly sack
of canned foot to the food bank
run by a church. A seagull
landed on the church's big cross
and shrieked. Translation?

"I like water!" or "Praise the
feathered Lord!" or "I'm a gull
and I like to scream!" On the way
home I spied a hawk sitting
in a gentelemanly way on a
power-line, watching cars go
by, waiting for an unwary squirrel
or the evening rabbit commute.

Yes, well, here we all are,
traveling another one of our days.

hans ostrom 2024

Angry, salty and nsfw!

Bravo

The Limits of Anxiety

Anxiety feel like breathless

pressure in the chest,
a fluttering suddely of crazed
birds. Anxiety morphs
into dread, shakes the bars
of its cell for help.

Low charcoal clouds
move in, park just above
the head, which wants
to love hope but can't.

Anxiety's gaze wants
to weld itself to a dark pit,
a kind of sick security.

But it is nothing, anxiety
is nothing compared to what
the tortured imprisoned,
the constantly bombed and
displaced, must feel always,
even as they sleep, if they sleep.

hans ostrom 2024

Donald Trump is Who America Is

From Time to Time

The phrase "from time to time"

makes my mind see stepping stones

set wide-apart. Circles of light

on stages. Old pulpy catalogues

and sports newsprint pages,

imploded miners' shacks, 

and burial mounds, retired profs

(strangers now on what they'd thought

of as "their" campuses) taking

hard steps into a library. "From

time to time" makes me sad,

forlorn, and blue--but glad

to be alive today though feeling still

a chill on back and shoulders as Earth

spins me toward my personal last time. 

hans ostrom 2024

Without Shadow

My shadow left me for a day.

It joined a general shade.
In sun I looked down on the walk
In vain to find a silouette made.

Without my shadow, I felt sad
And wondered did I still exist?
Did light sail through my body now?
Was I insubstantial as a mist?

My shadow, it returned at last
And soldered itself to me.
My shadow proves my substance, yes--
It places and displaces--see?

hans ostrom 2024

Northern Hemispheric November

Oh, November--

my bête noire,
cabinet of cold rain,
sinister capitan of snow,
avant garde of Winter,
tree-stripper, soil-sealer,
gloom-injector, glum puritan.

Oh, November, neither
enemy nor friend, just a
doom-inducer, a sour neighbor,
a moldy blanket, a day-cutter,
a sun-shrouder: you
are a head-cold kind of month.

hans ostrom 2024

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