Queue Behavior

Note that a second u
and a second e wait
in line behind the first
ones but never
make it to the front.

Many moons ago
when I worked in Germany,
I learned how queues
in Germany collapse
as, wordlessly, most people
cut in line until a blob
replaces the line. I
tended to get on the bus
to Bretzenheim last, amused.

In Sweden, one queues up
and behaves. To do otherwise
would be impractical, egocentric,
and vaguely weak of will. The
idea being, if indeed an idea it
was, it's just a line, this is life,
one must endure, and we're
in Sweden, so chill out & say little.

hans ostrom 2023

Bodies in the Sauna

Her body, his body,

nude in a sauna,
and she slick with sweat
sits on his lap facing him,
and he slick with sweat
holds her close. Deep

Swedish winter wraps
around the building of flats.
This is good," she says. This
is very, very good. He likes
the softly scratchy feel of her
pubic hair & the miracle
of hardening nipples. It is
good, he says--and stops
himself from saying a rare
jewel of a night because
she would mock him for
adding  a flourish.

The cold air that strikes them
as they leave the sauna and cross
the hallway naked to their flat
feels like freshly invented air.
Inside they guzzle water, shower,
get in bed, and make love. Later,

as she snores, he sinks like an anchor
into sleep. but he thinks he needs
to button up the night with words.
To himself he says, Good, very
good & then his brain disappears.

hans ostrom 2022

Őland

 Őland

(islands east of the Swedish mainland)

We sail past rocks that glaciers

rubbed round, so the square story

goes. Round heads of old monks,

slick heads of seals sleeping on

black-boulder islands.

We’re sailing to a land, Åland.

It belongs to water, a semi-nation of Swedes

governed by Finns, its very-own flag

air-snapped by unconquered winds.

Three old Swedish men, drinking beer

this early morning, mutter

stories of boats, ships, water, and things

that go wrong. “Panama,” they say.

And “Gävle.” “Titta,” they say: Look,

and we pass the rocks past Őland.

The rocks pass us, looking. Things can’t

go wrong with rocks but can go

wrong on them. White swans

fly by. Earth never stops whirling—

so grave story goes. “Ibland,” the men

say. Sometimes. For Ő, which is island,

say O but with tongue lifted to middle,

an island the vibrations flow past

and out through the O into air.

Å is just oh, and oh is just water.

In Waterland, land becomes a sought-after afterthought:

“Oh. . . . Land.” Ibland. Åland. Őland.

1994/2021

Free-Radical Yearning

Sunlight just
before dusk
adds gold to fir trees'
green--shadows
in the boughs, dark lapis.

And sky's color
behind is at its palest
blue all day. I've
seen this burnished image,
only slightly varied,

hundreds of times
in the Sierra, in Sweden
and Germany, in
Istanbul and the Pacific
Northwest.

When it soaks in,
it always generates
a slow longing,

an impersonal sadness
involved with grandeur,
peace, and hope--all
far, far out of reach.

The heart, as we call
that mental zone, pretends
to want to ask the trees
to stay in that light,
beg the scene never to leave.

The question's
really a way to savor the mild
spiritual soreness, this
free-radical yearning,
this old, old emotion
which even other species
of hominid felt,
drawing from an immense,
invisible psychic lake.



hans ostrom 2017

Detective in Uppsala

Somebody hired me to find out
what happens to light in Sweden.
Uppsala, specifically.  Hey, my
far-far was Swedish, I wanted to say
as I started the job. There was no
fooling the Swedes.  Every move I
made was American.  Even when I
was quiet, I was loud; and on time,
late. What I found out.

was light fills snow in Uppsala along about
January.  It will have you dreaming
in Bergman scenes.  In summer, it
leaves town for the lakes. It takes
the place of paint: some buildings
are an uncanny yellow, others eye-blue,
others as pale as the belly of a fish
in the Fyris River. I saw light

playing on birch bark, in gold hair,
black hair, brown hair. I have
a recording of light congratulating
raindrops.  The light in this
one apartment almost had me
sobbing, it was so beautiful.
(Private Eyes aren't supposed to cry.)
I praised light in crystal. I
tasted it in pastry.  That's
what I found out. That's my report.


* far far = grandfather
hans ostrom 2017

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

Ego Insurance

Next time, I'll buy insurance
for my ego. Then if it should
be crushed in a ruinous affair
or cracked in aspirational failure,

the Insurer will present me
with compensation--
perhaps a cup of Swedish coffee,
a kind word, or a small award:

Totally Insignificant Person of the Week.


hans ostrom 2016

Söderfors, Sweden

Söderfors, Sweden


Brown mortar, black bricks, buildings
from industry’s youth.

Two girls walk along a narrow
sandy path over the dam. Violent brown-black
water rushes through
the spillway. A sign cautions.

A gull nests in a granite slab.
(Incubation is a branch of geology.)

Reach for the black bricks—
to know them. Their texture is glass.
They were cooked to the point
at which manufacturing gives way

to beautiful compounds. Söderfors
is a silent town. Its cast-iron clock
is ornate and wrong. Bright green,

nearly lime: that used to be the color
of a rusting Saab parked all by itself.

What I Miss About Sweden

Jag saknar Sverige. Have I
sentimentalized that long country?
To be sure. Still there's much
to miss specifically. How
Swedes listen and have known
silence to be a key component
of conversation. How
they're suspicious of people
who require attention and thus
of Americans. The ubiquitous

(or so it seems) aromas
of coffee and pastry and certain
spices. Small grocery stores
that sell small potatoes still
with dried mud on them. The

presence of the absence of war.
A multitude of drolleries.
Crunch of tires and boots
on snow. Bicycles through snow.
The practical national enthusiasm
for children as a protected class.

Group-thinking (but not group-
thought). The way the language
swings--no wonder that the Swedes
loved Duke Ellington. Certain shades

of yellow on large public buildings,
and of red on cottages. Order,
without mania. How light
is a Norse god. Pop music. Jazz,
blues. Cucumber sandwiches.
Herring, herring everywhere.
And the news, which is, as it
should be, presented with
suspicion and perplexity.

hans ostrom 2015

Fyris River

The Fyris River
is a fine small river--
energetic and direct.

It runs through
Uppsala there
in Sweden, I want
to say, but should
instead say that
energetic
and direct humans
built Uppsala up
around the river,
which they named
Fyris. The stones

and bricks and
water and light and
birds and darkness
all seem familiar
to  each other
there in Sweden,
Uppsala, as if
they have worked
things out pretty
well. I did not

however speak to
any fish. I tried
to do so once
when I paused on
a bridge over
the Fyris on
my way to the bookstore
during Book Month.

The fish were
indisposed--reading,
perhaps, in the Fyris.



2015 hans ostrom