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

"Apocryphal Couples"

Attila and Heidi Hun are making an RV run
from East to West.
Captain and Margo Ahab peddle pleasure-crafts
on the Gulf Coast.
Gregor and Donnie Mendel enjoy amateur
entomology in their spare time.
Sisyphus performs the boulder-roll
at Cirque de Absurd in Vegas,
where his girlfriend, Missyphus,
deals blackjack.
Matsuo and Yoshi Basho run
a very successful outdoor-adventure
business in Colorado and Chile.
Pancho and Vivienne Villa
just signed with a cable network
to do their own Reality Revolutionary
show. Exciting!Huck Finn
sells insurance for a firm
owned by Jim X in Chicago,
which he finds to be a might cold.
He and Becky Thatcher
have been seeing each other.


hans ostrom 2014

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

After Next

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Next

What happens next? Next happens
next. You go to a funeral, a hard
summing-up, and you feel as if
something's been sealed. Not long
thereafter you're standing in a
grocery store, buying celery,
or you're at home pawing through
mail distractedly.
*
Tides of ordinary
life roll in, unchecked by what we
deem momentous, even cataclysmic.
In the midst of broadcast
disaster, when time seems like
it should be seized, people
need to go to the bathroom,
put clothes in a closet, feed
farm-animals or a pet. Our
own parts in the flow end, yes.
The flow, no, never ends.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom