Your thoughts become
a flock of sheepdistracting you
from needed sleep.
You ask a dog in mind
to run sheep off a cliff.
The dog just barks and
barks: as if, as if as if.
hans ostrom 2025
Monday, June 30, 2025
The Dog in MInd
distracting you
from needed sleep.
You ask a dog in mind
to run sheep off a cliff.
The dog just barks and
barks: as if, as if as if.
It's Fine, Just Fine
By an old guy's standards,
a hot day on the Pacific Coast.
Heat cooks the sky
to an ashen blue.
I work in the garden some.
Gardeners volunteer
join the Sisyphus
crew. They toil through
myriad cycles that roll
around to starts. Water,
soil, sun, seed, sprout,
plant, blossom, veg, fruit.
Dig and pull and lift and tend.
It all collapses like a circus
tent. Winter eats leftovers,
belches frost. In Spring,
it's Finnegan Begin-Again.
Heavy mud, dead stalks.
In the now, I fall back
into a chair, guzzle water,
dash some on my face
and neck. A crow lands
on a wire and keeps its
beak open to let heat
out of its body. The bird
and I just happen to be
now here in this tiny wedge
of nature. We finish
tasks as assigned,
and it's fine, just fine.
You and me, bird, you
and me and that
minor, muscled god
whose name hisses.
hans ostrom 2025
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Monday, June 23, 2025
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Monday, June 16, 2025
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Thursday, June 12, 2025
The Derelicts and the Rules
I walk the dirt-path loop around
Wright Park, Tacoma, & I'm get-ting into stride & then I hear the steps
behind me: they're far too purposeful--
I sense aggression. And with dog in tow
a man comes up beside me. His face, I think,
unkindly, looks like an angry boil.
His rant: "Good morning, sir, hey did
you see the derelicts down there? No one's
supposed to sleep inside the park at night!
They need to clear them out! If all of us
don't follow rules, anarchy's bound to rise.
And sir, you'd better store your food and
medicine--sufficient for two weeks! You
hear those helicopters overhead? 'They'
are about to shut It down!"
And then the guy plus dog are past
me--gone. After the walk I go
for groceries. And there's the cashier with
the close-cropped hair--for she's just gone
though chemo treatment. The line is stuck
because her customer is having issues with
her credit card.
My turn at last.
"So sorry for the wait," she says.
I say, "No problem, it's okay,"
and she responds, "You know,
you have to help somebody sometimes."
Now there's a rule that we might follow--
oh, yes, a sentimental thought. But still
unless you're building shelter for unsheltered
folk, you'd better let the "derelicts"
sleep where they can. I go outside
with groceries, don't hear the helicopters.
hans ostrom 2025
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Monday, June 2, 2025
Beauty School
At the Medford, Oregon, airport,
the Sky House Bar and Grill(one floor up) looks past runways
to flat baked grass and green,
lumpy hills. The server
says she's going to Beauty
School--which takes me back
to when women went to
"beauty shops," not salons
or spas. I hope she earns
a Ph.D. in Beauty and becomes
a noted scholar in the field.
Her ways, wit, and face
suggest she has the aptitude.
hans ostrom 2025
Shakespeare's Flow
(At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival,
Ashland, Oregon)
Lithia Creek pours out
of Oregon springs and stair-step-rolls over dark boulders.
Its braided riffles ruffle foam,
then ease into pools. All
the trees--alder, cedar, oak,
fir, sycamore--drip dappled light
on the eager stream. It's a big
creek, known to flood,
and as it flattens, it runs
through Ashland, where
Shakespeare's plays
migrated to Far West 90
years ago and found stages
in a snug valley. Shakespeare's
language, rhythms, wit, wonder,
and knowing pour forth from
an eternal spring, it seems,
and feed streams of drama
& reading round and round
the planet--in how many idioms?
hans ostrom 2025
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