Vienna

 (1980)

1980

How the fuck did I get here? I asked myself.
By train, dummy. Winter. Yes, yes: opera,
history, magnificence, Sigmund. A big so what?
to all of that and more when you're thin

on money, low on rest, and wracked
by mistakes you made. Back "home,"
they'd elected Reagan president. That, children,
was a point of no return. Austria is

of great historical importance. Okay, fine,
but I'm hungry, I thought. So I went out,
and I went out, and I found myself a cafe,
which featured a kind of importance I

required--hot food and wine, buzz of
customers, glowing lights and cigarette
smoke, a blond woman with a wry
smile, and a sense of proportion.

hans ostrom 2020/2024

Winter Chant

Winter shiver, light low.

Winter shiver, snow.
Icy days, crows hide.
The gray skies, wide.

Later Winter. Spring, come!
Pulsings like a drum.
Later Winter, longer days--
What the clock-watch says.

Latest Winter, buds swell:
Spring to ring its bell.
Watch for Winter shiver, though:
Mean frost--you never know.

Winter Chant

 

Winter shiver, light low.

Winter shiver, snow.
Icy days, crows hide.
The gray skies, wide.

Later Winter. Spring, come!
Pulsings like a drum.
Later Winter, longer days--
What the clock-watch says.

Latest Winter, buds swell:
Spring to ring its bell.
Watch for Winter shiver, though:
Mean frost--you never know.

"A Winter Twilight," by Angelina Weld Grimké

Just Plain Hard

Rooted in Oklahoma's winter plains,
unleaved gray-grown trees
graduate from artery trunks
to capillary branches, final
twigs feathering into nothing.

Here people set hard faces
against hard work. At night
neon blooms, blazes--
a reward for getting through
or going to another shift.

Oklahoma, flat and difficult,
cast iron red ground:
look elsewhere for loam. This
is home if you need it to be.
Your choice, maybe.


hans ostrom 2019

The Rack of Seasons

What a rack of seasons
that was. In January
I fell backward into snow
and was almost buried. Noise
left the world. Someone
pulled me up and tossed
me into Summer, where I
heard a rattlesnake,
broke boulders with
a sledgehammer for minimal
wage, and drank cheap wine,

which tipped me over onto
Spring, where I caught a cold,
grew anxious, and hoarded
books, which opened up
into October, where I stacked
the last haul of firewood--
dry oak from dead trees.
Acorns pebbled the ground
and the North Wind
began to say No.



hans ostrom 2018

Puget Sound, Winter

Attend the winter light along the Sound.

Recall the rivers and the runs of fish?

The Earth agrees to fail; the year’s come down.

Most days the sun, per se, cannot be found

Except in willow leaves, low clouds, and mist

Attending Winter light along the Sound.

Maybe the salmon will again astound

Us with erotic, suicidal quests

Though Earth agrees to fail and years come down.

The young that work drink hard in this hard town.

Nation slaughters nation, no peace can last,

And Earth agrees to fail as years come down.

Shall we allow all fish to run aground

And Earth to die several unnatural deaths?

Attend the Winter light along the Sound.

The Earth agrees to fail. The year’s come down.

--Hans Ostrom/2015

"Winter Moon," by Langston Hughes

"She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep," by Robert Graves

Christmas Poems

15 Poems on Youtube related to Christmas

"Conjecturing a Climate," by Emily Dickinson