"I Carry Inside Myself My Earlier Faces," by Tomas Gösta Tranströmer

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

"The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water," by William Butler Yeats

A Way to Grow Old

Laboring, I used to power

though lassitude like a lorry
going up through the gears.

Digging trenches, mixing
concrete, hauling hod,
pounding anils, house-painting,
weed-slashing....

Tired? Take a breath
or chug water & get back
to it. Engage the will
like a lever. Age

inforces hard limits.
Heat and humidity
level me. So too cold
weather. I say to myself,

"That's it. Tools down:
done for the day."
One way to grow old:
realistically.

hans ostrom 2025

Longtime Married

Two candle stubs

in old candlesticks

drown their flames 

in wax. A few strings

of gray smoke disperse

in the dim, darkening 

room at dusk.

We're both quiet

as we look, together

and separately, 

into advancing darkness.

Finally, one of us

says, "Well, . . . ."

and the other says,

'Yes, . . .". We rise

from the table,

pick up the dinner plates,

silverware, glasses,

and take them to 

the kitchen where one

of us flicks on the light. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Uphill

July heat hangs over the bottom

of the hill, scratching at me
like an old wool blanket.

Crows that aren't picking
mites from feathers
leave their beaks open

to cool down. Mid-way
up the climb, I flag
& my vision gets a little

weird. Dehydration.
I sit on a a dark grey
rock under a tree.

Finally I make it to
the top of the hill:
a breeze kicks in.

I feel better but still
old & I buy a bottle
of water, splashing

some on my hot
neck and forehead,
guzzling the rest.

People, shrubs, buildings,
buses: though brightly lit,
they all, every one, look tired.

hans ostrom 2023

Personal Relativity

They tell me time seems

to speed up the older people get
because each day, month, or year
becomes a smaller and smaller
percentage of the overall total.
I hate math, so cold, so correct.

I recall school years
that dragged on for decades.
A magical summer or two
lasted a millennium. Then

the time wagon turned into
a bullet train and five years
became a minute. Whole years
vanished like peas down a sink.

Today a woman said to me,
"I'm 70 years old. What
happened?" I said, "Ask that
bastard, time. Happy birthday!"

Entropy Dance

Entropy is undefeated,

has a perfect winning streak
since the Big Bang boogied
and bopped into Universe. Still,

things and beings have
their days and nights. Our sun
can do some gardening here
on Earth for a span we really
can't imagine. I will

have lived and listened
and read about physics
(the math inscrutable to me)
for some decades. Decades!
Less than a single photon
as far as Time's concerned.

Brothers and Sisters, the aging
run out of energy. Their coping
turns into an awkward
dancing tribute to Entropy.

hans ostrom 2023

Sunshine and Shadow

 "Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights . . ." --Oscar Wilde, "Helas"

One day you're running in sunshine,

the next just walking in it, 

a little weary. The day after that,

you're walking in shade,

more tired still. And the next:

sitting in shadows. Then, well,

you become a shadow. People

come running and strolling by

in bright light. They glance your way

and don't see anything.

hans ostrom 2021

Old Man, I'm Talking to You

 [revised a bit]

Old man, I'm talking to you. I am you: 

I didn't used to be, no--I used to fly past

on a train. You'd be sitting on a bench

at the station--gray eyes, gray sweater,

a blur of inert age. And I? Well, I

was all tendon-taut, unfraught, lithe,

and smug with youth. Uncouth. I was

on my way to . . . to here, as

it happened, and it's happened.

I'm sitting, situated at the station now,

too, talking to you, old man. Here

comes the rain. Here comes a train.

hans ostrom 2013/2021

"Young and Old," by Charles Kingsley

 Reading/video of a poem by the Victorian Anglican priest, progressive reformer, novelist, and poet Charles Kingsley. The poem is the source, or a source, of the old saying "every dog has its day." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLpJreYwGQ4

Transformation: Dementia

He remembers language
but not his memory. He speaks
of what he sees. He scratches
his knees. A straggling memory
wanders by, covered with soot
from a burnt whole life.

To this memory he says hello.
Does not recall why he said
hello. Does not recall that
he said hello. He doesn't
remember scratching his knees.
He speaks. He sees. He listens
to speaking he speaks. It does
not interest him. This does:
An aroma. Of . . .?

He falls asleep in front of
what he sees. Outside of his sleep,
we speak of what we remember
of his memory using some of
the language he used to recall.


hans ostrom 2017

Curve of Life

Hello, curve of life.
Darling, you bend me.
You give me the blues.
So generous.

From all directions
(he whined and over-stated),
comes the onslaught of aging.
I'm too tired to list them.

Mitosis and meiosis. Oh,
how fresh my cells were
when I first studied cells.
La-dee-dah. Curve of life,

where will you take me? Over
a dark ridge--and then soaring
over vast landscapes under stars?
Perhaps something a bit less fancy.


hans ostrom 2016

Old Notes

The old woman looked at the image in the
mirror and thought, "My hair is a corpse."
Lately she's regarded her memories
as notes about a forgotten novel.



hans ostrom 2015

"An Old Woman," by Mina Loy

"Look Younger With Natural Ingredients," by Hans Ostrom

Look younger
with natural ingredients. Look
natural with younger
ingredients. Eliminate

bags and wrinkles. Bag
those wrinkles in
wrinkled bags. Yeah,
you're going to look

younger, according
to yourself. To others,
you'll look the age
you are; still.

People you're
attracted to won't
be attracted to you:
nothing new.

But you'll feel younger.
Briefly. Maybe. Give it a try!
Four easy payments. Shipping
and handling not included.

hans ostrom 2014

Men at 60

Men at 60 have certain
urges. Check that. They
imagine they have certain
urges. Men at 60 are
uncertain. They rarely
speak or act as if
they are uncertain.

Men at 60 wonder if
they'll die right now
walking in sunlight or just
later sleeping or at
63.27, 80, 71, 69.45,
or . . . . Men at 60

unlike men at 40 or 50
aren't appealing, even
to themselves. Dear
Narcissus: Go fuck yourself.

Men at 60 have done it all
and done nothing and done
some things that have
amounted to nothing. They're
bored by photos of koala
bears and panda bears and
most every other
goddamned thing.

At 60 men eat the same things
over and over. Secretly
they hate their own opinions
most of all. If they don't,
they should. Men at 60

like to hear singing but
do not like to plan to or
to pay to listen to it.
Men at 60 have bizarre
ugly regions on their
bodies, too many to count.



hans ostrom 2014

To Aging Friends

Oh, my aging friends,
what illnesses and
infirmities await us?

We hope to sail
along indefinitely
in these bodies.

We know we'll
be intercepted
and boarded by pirates.

The rigging creaks.
Boat-loads of young
women pass.

At best, they ignore
us, at worst laugh
at our sad crafts.

The aging are
a patient armada sailing
under a tie-dyed flag.

Ah, my aging friends,
let's drink wine in moonlight
on this our rolling deck.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Conversation Between A and B

A: Would you rather look at an image or read a page?
B: Read a page.
A: What's the wildest sex you ever had?
B: Define "wild" or "wildest," please.
A: (Defines.)
B: (Answers.)
A: My god, I didn't expect it to have been that wild.
B: It was a long time ago.
A: That's a non sequitur. . . . Would you rather talk on a land-line or send/receive "texts"?
B: Land-line. Or send/receive a letter.
A: You mean paper, stamps, envelopes, closing, opening?
B: I do mean that.
A: How many times have you Skyped?
B: One and one-half.
A: Okay, I think we have enough evidence to suggest that you are old.
B: It was a long time ago.

The Idea of Aging

The Idea of Aging

We're very young when
we first know what
getting old is to mean:
that moment in childhood
when we learn not by choice
the difference between
what we just do and what
we must do.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom