At the End of an Old Year in Pacifica

    (New Year's Eve, 2018, Pacifica)

As the people
in the loud house
toast something
or other, a dog
stands among them,
eager to find
actionable meaning
in a human sound
or gesture. The
people know what
many words and gestures
mean, and this creates
a burden the dog
will never know.
All gathered are
mammals on the edge of
a coast. In its way
that is something to toast.


hans ostrom 2019

Kiruna: New Year's Eve

(December 1980)

At noon there was a murky soup of light,
which darkness drank.

Iron miners cruise in large
awkward old American cars
on Kiruna's frozen streets.
The custom is for each drunk
passenger to pay a driver
to be not drunk.

Samis sell bone-handled knives
and jewelry the color of
salmon eggs.

At the New Year's party, my Swedish
cousin and I watch shadows and smudges
of the original King Kong play
on a Finnish TV station. My cousin
is blonder than Fay Wray.

Fireworks outside seem stupid because
we didn't have to wait for darkness.
At 11:00 p.m. my cousin reports
that she always cries at the stroke
of the New Year. I'm prepared,
like a Swede, when tears travel
from her eyes like small droplets
of Sami pewter.  I'm impressed

when one tear lands in her
glass of Norwegian champagne.



1981/2017 Hans Ostrom

from Auden's "New Year Letter"

A brief selection read aloud from W.H. Auden's long poem, "New Year Letter" (1940):