"Silence," by e.e. cummings

A recording/video of a very short poem by e.e. cummings, "Silence."

The link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNKM0znIrM

All He Could Manage To Do

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you
a man cut grass and picked up trash
and sat down then. He thought
about America's most recent
consolidation of white-supremacist
power, became queasy. Thought
of vomiting on the cut grass but
did not. A hummingbird

visited a nearby rosemary bush,
pale blue blossoms fluffed out
modestly like women's
handkerchiefs in 1911. Hummingbird
throat-chirped when it backed off
a blossom, and again when it
air-wheeled itself back for another
nectar-strike. The man made
a powerless choice. He let

sight and sound of one bird
help him breathe out of his
disgust and go more lightly
through next tasks. It was pitiful.
It was all he could manage to do.


hans ostrom 2019

Hawks Don't Often Perch That Low

A hawk, bedecked in variegated
brown feathers, had parked on a low,
thick fence post. I walked by on
a muddy road. The hawk ignored

me, also two horses grazing in rain.
What did domestication and the
privileges of an American horse
farm have to do with his carved

beak and mythic talons? Just before
the bird leaned forward, pre-flight,
I squinted to see through rain
and wondered what a hawk's

thought looks like. The gone
hawk left that topic open,
and I went on plodding
down the sodden road.


hans ostrom 2018

Crow Travel

Just sitting outside in search of
fresh air, not looking for them:
a couple hundred crows
flying southeast across a chalk sky.

Were they coming from the famous
crow compound and annual banquet
on Whidbey Island?  Hell, I
didn't know.  Crows don't

fly in formation, not like those
fascist geese. In fact, they looked
like they'd been in a weed cafe
in Amsterdam or something--

just kind of flap-sauntering.
They flew in two groups.
Between the intervals, a solitary
crow flew from the same

direction, landed on a tree,
and got loud, as if to say,
"I didn't want to go with y'all
anyway!" Borderline personality.

I don't think it was migration.
More like they were off to
an academic crow conference
or a big wedding. Crows

just look like they have a better
handle on this reality thing.
They're not all out of control
and self-destructive like us.



hans ostrom 2017

Kildeer

("The flight of the Kildeer is strong and rapid, and is at times protracted to a great distance. It skims quite low over the ground, or plays at a great height in the air, particularly during the love season, when you may see these birds performing all sorts of evolutions on wing."  audobon.org)

Kildeers, about the size of flickers,
screamed across the pasture, summers.
Their shrieks were very fine, accomplished,
their low, straight routes efficient.

Thank God I didn't try to make them
symbolize or teach: what a bore,
a lugubrious Wordsworthian chore. 
No. Just the kildeers, fast fliers,

loud criers, going fast from copse
of oaks to stand of pines. 


hans ostrom 2017

A Sultan at Sunset

Thirty feet up, the hummingbird hovered,
looking at sunset behind blue, wrinkled
Olympic Mountains. After a long day
of nectar-hauling, why not? Sitting facing

East, I watched the bird watch. I then
saw it trace with its body an enormous
precise circle in air.  Wondering what
or if this circle signified was a gift

grand enough for a sultan.  The invisible,
unforgettable shape suggested geometric
graffiti, avian ritual, or a secret signal
to the sun.  I almost applauded.

The whirring bird zipped off to close
the astounding performance: what a pro.
As Sultan, I decree my hummingbird
equal to Whitman's eagle, Poe's raven,

the crows of Ted Hughes and Al
Hitchcock, Shelley's and Mercer's
skylark, and Bukowski's murdered
mockingbird. (I refuse to discuss

Yeats's rapist Zeus-goose.) The effect of
this decree, the Sultan does not know.


hans ostrom 2017

I Robin, I

I robin tip
my body forward
on an axis
when I hop-walk.
I robin stand
up tall after
I stop. I
robin turn my
head to listen
to/look at grass,
so to seek
evidence of worms.

I robin swallow
a worm whole
with a bit
of dirt. I
robin may also
chop worms into
pieces, then eat,
or take them
back to nestlings

I robin like
my orange feather
shirt and my
gray feather jacket.
I robin fly
and hop with
other robins long
ways after something
changes in the weather's
tone of voice.

I robin flute
fluidly my tune,
I robin I. 


hans ostrom 2017

Ferocious Form

Is it art or is it nature? Yes.
Starlings' startling flock
masses, fractalates, twists,
and surges in anti-patterns.

Each bird's both medium
and member of the troupe-
image. It is a ferocity of
form, undulating in the afternoon.



hans ostrom 2017

Eve and Adam Evicted by Landlord

So after Eve and Adam got their Know on,
God evicted them, but notice please
that Eden stayed right there, the primest
piece of real estate there ever was,
and was not, for sale. It is a glorious
space, ipso and facto. It's round and flat
and low and high and wet and dry,
packed with flora, also fauna, and
maybe, yes, a sauna, oh why not?
Can I tell you where it is and why?
Oh, I wish. Or do I? Better not to know,
perhaps, Wasn't that the lesson of
eviction? Let's  ask dove and crow.



hans ostrom 2017

Crow Knows Chronos

How does a crow
know when to slow
down as it flies
toward ragged-tipped trees
near Pacific?
You tell me.

And tell me this, your Majesty:
How does the eye
know when to spy
crows as they slow-
ly approach that tree,
ragged-topped next to coast?

Will you science me
when you tell me
why brain, which
is eye, which is crow,
knows crow, ocean,
and differences between?
Why brain indeed knows,
why cerebral deeds seem sane
when nothing would make
less science

to the unaccustomed crow
than eye and ragged
tree-top, ocean and black
ragged crow-wing brain?
Oh, you tell me,
oh, talk to me

using available light
and good godawful language
which crow's caw & ocean's
elasticity can soon articulate.
You science me, fathom
depths and chart crow-flight,
you all, you You, you too, O crOw.






hans ostrom 2015


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"The Superb Owl"

(super bowl)


What is this superb owl
that everyone's talking about?
It sounds fantastic. I would
like to watch it, to see it glide
in moonlight across
a clearing, alighting in a grove.

Well, yes, of course, we may hold
a superb owl press-conference
and attend superb owl parties!
I don't yet know what in particular
the superb owl even better
than other owls I've seen.
I will not quit until I find out.

In the meantime, let be known
that near barns and in woods,
in city parks and gullies,
on plains and in mountains,
I am a fan of the superb owl,
its perfect wingspan cutting
silently, like longing,
through the air.


hans ostrom
copyright 2015

"Eagle Musings"

That eagle likes to sit on wood,
seize it with his bladed fists.
Rotting meat's preferable to him;
it takes less tearing, saves wear

on his old yellow beak. His
eyesight's fine. He likes to read
the waters and the fields,
great stories in which food moves.

When snow comes there's not much to do
but remember and, occasionally, shriek.


hans ostrom 2015

"Crow Installation," by Hans Ostrom

A crow had crapped
on a gray sidewalk
this morning:

a big blopping dollop
of liquid in a heart-shape.

A gray-green dominated
this installation
of public art, with

undertones of blue-black
and a swirl of white:
fantastic! The consistency
was that of diluted
acrylic paint.


hans ostrom

Old Seagull

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Old Seagull

One old white seagull prowled wet grass
near brick buildings, looking for worms.
It walked arthritically and seemed chilled.

A lone, hunched seagull is a dignified
defeat, a sign of how hopeless hope is.
Was the bird's eyesight still good enough

to see worms? Did the bird ache? Do
seagulls fly back to the beach to die,
or do they get stranded on a street,

eaten by a crow or a raccoon? The
seagull was a general in exile,
a feathered Napoleon on Elba.

It was a heroic nun, a white flag
hanging from a wall of a blasted fort.
The gull seemed to know everything.

It kept its routine of life.
Walking past, I admired the bird,
which ignored me, which I admired.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Nothing To Explain

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Nothing To Explain
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A stout frailty of birds noises things up well
in gray rain this evening. They empty their
throats before feathering down to sleep
in trees and brush. Meanwhile, I climb
into a hulking steel wheeled-thing and go
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to market to secure such items as oranges,
bread, and strawberries. I don't understand
birds, nor they, me. Thus shall it always be.
Yet we may share a burst of activity at dusk,
paying homage to nothing more than having
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made it through another day. The birds
and I ended up in the same place.
There's nothing to explain.
The have feathers. I have hair.
Both get wet in rain.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Bird Poems

Like love, death, and sunsets, birds seem to almost every poet to require yet one more poem. And like love, death, and sunsets, birds tempt the unsuspecting poet to write something sentimental, or to personify birds, as I just did when I wrote “birds tempt.” Actually, of course, poets tempt themselves to write sentimentally about birds, who have more important things to consider than poets. As with the rest of poetry and the subjects of poetry, a chief rule for bird poems is this: there are no rules. However, before writing a bird-poem, a poet might want to do what a bird-watcher does: observe; and then observe some more. That is, as long as the poet doesn’t rush to the writing with stock images of and prefabricated ideas about the bird in question, things should go all right.

The ultra-famous bird-poems include, of course, Poe’s “The Raven,” Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and Hopkins’ “The Windhover.”

Over the years, I’ve noticed that a fair percentage of students react negatively to “The Windhover,” partly because Hopkins’ sprung rhythm and heavy alliteration create some difficulty, but also perhaps because of the epigraph, “To Christ Our Lord.” Obviously, the poem does have its religious dimensions, but mainly it’s about that hawk up there, gliding, pausing, diving. It's also about the explosiveness of language itself. Even when I was only 17, I took easily to this poem and Hopkins’ work, for some reason. I think I simply sensed that Hopkins was doing in verse what jazz musicians do in music, and so I just found myself enjoying everything he was doing with words and lines, stresses and alliteration. It was pleasurable to me, even on the first reading. I also liked what he was doing with the hawk in the poem. I felt he really was trying to see the bird and to help us see the bird as the bird is. So although I don't try to argue students out of their resistance to the poem, I don't entirely understand the resistance.

Other fine bird poems include William Everson’s “Canticle of the Water Birds,” which I heard/saw Everson read several times; Robinson Jeffers’ “Hurt Hawks"; Emily Dickinson’s poem about the sparrow and the twig; and Ted Hughes’s book-length work, Crow. Dickinson also has the one that begins “A bird came down my walk.”

Karl Shapiro wrote an interesting poem in which he depicted a bird counter-intuitively in terms of a mechanism, a machine, and he wrote another one about having been attacked by a crow in Chicago. They’re both in his Collected Poems from Random House, published in the late 1970s.

At the risk of committing literary heresy, I'll admit that I believe Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" to be a hugely over-rated poem--and a problematic one, insofar as it glorifies rape, but also insofar as it's a bit silly. I know geese and swans can get mean, hiss, and bite, but if one really attacked a woman like Leda, I think Leda would simply wring its neck or kick it. The whole scene has always seemed a bit unintentionally comic to me. If Zeus appeared in the form of a lion, that would we one thing--but appearing as a large bird, but not even an eagle or a vulture? I mean, really. And finally, the question, "Did she put on his knowledge with his power?" seems not terribly pressing, and I've always wanted to answer, "Who cares? The woman was raped by a bird!" A more basic question might be, "Can a swan really have sex with a human?" Or: "Who does this lousy bird think he is--Zeus?!" It's one of those myths that I wouldn't mind a parodist like Mel Brooks retelling on film. . . .

. . . . In an homage to Dickinson, whom I regard as one of the great literary observers of nature, I played off “A bird came down my walk”:

Homage to Emily Dickinson

A bird came up

My mental walk.

It pinched a Dickinson

Scholar in half.

In my scrappy hometown,

I knew weirdos like you,

Liked them. They

Lived their lives,

And just their lives.

How rare that is

I began to know

Even at age six.

Your poems are prim

Graffiti scratched

On the back of Piety’s pew.

Good old you.

Your poems know more

Than ever they let on,

Were postcards sent

From privacy, anon.

© 2007

I also wrote a poem not just about a wren--but a Bewick’s wren (now that's specialization):

Wren

A Bewick’s wren landed on a fence-rail,

presented its image to my surprised view.

All of natural history had contributed

to this bird’s mere form, gray-brown

finish, up-slashed tail, and quick

departure into an atmosphere that is

no longer visible to us. When I saw

a Bewick’s wren today, I sensed

spirits nearby smiling wryly

at my mere thimbleful of awe.

© 2007

And here’s a link to “An E-Anthology of Avian Poems”:

http://birding.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=birding&cdn=hobbies&tm=6&f=00&su=p445.92.150.ip_&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.usd.edu/%7Etgannon/bird3.html

Happy birding.