in the wheel

in the wheel


my Aunt Nevada kept a chipmunk
in a cage. it got fatter than other
chipmunks even though it ran
in its little wire wheel. we kids,

we liked watching the chipmunk
eat and run. that chipmunk is nothing
but molecules recycled now. i thought
of it today. at home, i know the truth

and value of being no one and nobody.
detachment. then i go out there again,
and one way or another, i get suckered
into running inside the wheel.

call it ambition, work ethic, pride,
fear, making a living, compulsion,
whatever. it's a wheel. i think the big
difference is the chipmunk

knew it wasn't going anywhere. it
saw that clearly. this running and
going and wanting credit for running,
they're worse than the Sisyphus-deal.

he had a task. he went somewhere.
he didn't want or seek approval.
how many billions of us are stuck
in the wheel? hell, i have it good.

i know that. but
it's a wheel,
and it's less than
absurd.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Strong Views

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Strong Views

On the narrow road rising steeply
to Sierra City's cemetery, a wry
sign notes, "Not A Through Street."
We set the headstone of a dead aunt
next to a rock wall her brother
built. We place beneath the concrete

a full bottle of whiskey, a
horseshoe, a deer antler, and
a piece of rose quartz. Otherwise,
the aunt's not represented here
except in our memories. Her
ashes travel up by an alpine
lake somewhere. The family's
idiosyncratic, you might say,

and tardy, even haphazard, with
its burial rituals. In fact, there
are no rituals, no funerals or
formalities. People get together
eventually, share some laughs
and glum grief, eat, and drink.

A panting black dog lies
in the truck watching us lay
the headstone. Later, the aunt's
remaining brothers will visit
the stone in the shade, have
a look, say a total of, oh,
seven words, maybe. For now,

we kid around in the cemetery,
get the job done, nobody's
business but our own. Goodbye
to Aunt Nevada. The smooth blue
stone, saved from an arastra,
gives the pertinent dates, her
other last name, and a nickname--
then mentions, "Strong Views."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

For Aunt Nevada

One of my aunts, Nevada, died today. Although her name was initially Nevada Ostrom and then Nevada Lewis, the first name she went by was Babe, which sounds kind of funny in this (or any) day and age, and I forget the origin of the nickname. But as I've opined before, you wouldn't think a woman named Nevada would need a nickname of any kind, let alone Babe.

She was a rugged, stubborn sort. She started the only bar-fight I was ever in (and ever hope to be in). Some visitors, bikers, from out of town were in the bar, cursing. She told them to stop cursing (somewhat ironic, since when she was not in a public establishment, she cursed), and one of them called her a c**t, so she slapped him as hard as she could, and the fight was on. My mother, father, brother, and I were in the dining room of the establishment, and my uncle came to get us, telling my father that he needed his help, but giving no details. (Thanks very much.)

So we all went into the bar, where chairs and fists were already flying. My brother and I pulled one biker off some innocent neutral party. My father was knocked under a table, but he got up, grabbed a biker, put him in a bear-hug, and backed up to a wall. The fellow couldn't escape my father's grip, my father's back was to the wall., where he could survey the battle and use the biker as a shield, if necessary. Excellent strategy and tactics.

Eventually it all ended up outside, where my uncle knocked out one of the bikers with a punch that was almost Hollywood-like. Eventually, the sheriff showed up (law enforcement moves at its own pace in the Sierra Nevada). My mother mortified one of the bikers by lecturing him. I felt for the guy. He was a biker from the Bay Area, and this woman was giving him a lecture about civility. I remember her wagging a finger at him and asking, not rhetorically, "Why do you come to our town and start trouble?" He had no answer.

The sheriff took the bikers to the county seat and arrested them, chiefly because there were outstanding warrants on them in the Bay Area. (I like that term, "outstanding warrants"; it makes me wonder what a "truly excellent" warrant is.) No one associated with Aunt Nevada's side of the conflict was arrested, partly because the sheriff had known our family for 30 years (home-field advantage), and partly because the large biker Nevada slapped might have had trouble asserting that he had to slug several men to defend himself from her. I do remember that, for the first time in my life, I later had to fill out an "affadavit." At any rate, wee went home and cleaned up. No one was seriously injured. But no one ever let my Aunt Nevada forget that she had acted somewhat precipitously, especially when she and my uncle were outnumbered in the bar at the time. My Aunt Nevada remained unrepentant. She asserted that she had behaved correctly. No one in the family seemed able to mount persuasive counter-arguments.

In one of those strange coincidences, I'd been working on a poem involving Aunt Nevada just last night. I don't like to make too much of such things, but it does seem a little uncanny, especially since I had not heard anything about her health having suddenly failed. So it goes.

The Compost-Lesson

Aunt Nevada showed me
a compost-heap between
the ranch-house and her garden
when I was 8. I don't remember
what she said. I remember that
she said, talking to me as if
I were older than 8. She was trying
to explain how composts worked
and their relation to gardens.

The sounds of her explaining:
these I heard and liked. They
were human noise in a language
I understood. She was an aunt
providing linguistic nutrients
to a nephew. I remember seeing
a cracked white egg-shell
and coffee-grounds in the compost.
I remember a strong compost-
smell--not unpleasant; earth-perfume.
I saw fat red worms writhe
as if they were having bad
worm-dreams. Around the meadow

where the Zergas had built that ranch,
conifer-covered Sierra mountains stood
stately in full sunlight. Wind made leaves
of cornstalks in Aunt Nevada's garden gossip.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom