Galoshes

Great word, not a great boot.

Made of rubber, with metal clips,
not cloth or leather laces.

They kept my feet
dry but not warm. In
snow, they leaked.

What a joy to get them
& wet wool socks off,
to put dry socks on

and heat my feet
near the speckled
cast iron HOME COMFORT

stove, throbbing
with oak wood warmth.
The wants of a 10-year-

old, funneled down
to the wish for warmth and
a grudge against galoshes.

hans ostrom 2024

Hans

Hans, pronounced hands

in my case: my name. A
version of John, Juan, Evan,
Giovanni....Such school

nicknames as Fingers,
Hansburger & Hanzy
have caromed off it.

When I was 6, I asked
my mother if I could change
my name to "just plain Bill."
"No," she said. Parenting
by edict was in style then.
For years the tale of the request
made the rounds in the extended
family. (You're welcome!)

A Jewish professor
in graduate school, after I'd
known him a while, asked
me if my first name was German.
"No, Swedish," I reported.
He looked relieved. I felt
relieved he look relieved.
Neither of us named
what we felt. Now I wear

my Hans like an old
friendly flannel shirt.
Names! Like invisible
back-packs. Like signs
above the shops of us.
We answer to our name,
and for it.

hans ostrom 2023

Nightmare, My Visitor

 At age 4, then lasting for years,

a short nightmare came to live with me.
(Sometimes it struck just as I nodded off.)

Me, in a dark oval space--
like a hollowed out eggplant.
I touched the pliant walls & then

a dark shape like a train engine
ran over me, erased me & I
startled myself awake to stay alive.

It visited less often down the years
& finally retired. Somewhere deep
in the mind's damp stone workshop,

a laborer toils to work through
something kept secret from me.
The translation of that bedeviling

dream lies in a vault down there.
I don't miss the nightmare. But if
it came back, I'd think, "Oh, it's you."

The News from Inside

Inside me, still,

lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)--
and to watch. It seems

I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.

Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160, 000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.

And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward:
no proof of this.

Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,

an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.

Inside me, there's
a startling, chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense,
although we must pretend
that much of it does.

And Walt Whitman...
was one great self-publicist:
American, that is.

Becoming a Spider

Maybe I'll turn
into a spider
at the end
and follow
the silk filament
up and up
all the way
into the clearest
sunny sky
I've seen
since childhood.


hans ostrom 2020

Absent Sister

Sister I never had, I miss you--
rather formally. I know
you would have taught me
important things and listened.

Maybe right over there
in Anti-Matter, you live
and I live; or you live and
I am the brother you never had.



hans ostrom 2017

Smug Shadow

When I was young, I didn't take
my shadow for granted much.
I looked for and at it. My preference
was that version roughly
proportional to my body. I felt

ludicrous when I saw the one
where my torso disappeared
and my legs grew to meet
my neck.  I hardly ever look
at my shadow now.  It just

never seemed to develop
into a major innovative
displacement of light. And
honestly, I'm tired of carrying
it around.  At the same time:

no shadow, no me.  It is
a kind of proof. Believe me,
my shadow's quite aware
that it's indispensable to my being.
It's a smug, insubstantial thing.



hans ostrom 2017

Partial Report from Childhood

Heights: obviously perilous.
Snow: tedious, never
as pleasurable as they would
persuade you it is. Adults:
loud and/or tired. Family:

a pecking order and a proliferation
of comparisons. School:
40% cruelty, 50% boredom,
10% pleasure. Men: in charge,
even if no one knows why.

Women: perfumed, patient,
smarter than they act.
Girls: fascinating, mercurial.
Did I mention fascinating?

Books: reliable. The future:
an absentee landlord.



hans ostrom 2017

The Shark Teeth Underground

I bought six shark teeth today.  Small ones.
Inexpensive. Also cheap, although not from
a shark's point of view. They came in a week
plastic box with a black foam mini-mattress.

They look a little like bobcat teeth.
Their color runs from taupe to blonde.

They remind me of when I bought
a chocolate-brown baby octopus
at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco,
when I was 8. These cheap,

eccentric creature keepsakes
(my mother's word) keep me going.
They symbolize a child's economy,
which dictates that all the stuff

in the world, like sticks, rocks, bones,
and bugs, is a vast, astonishing
pile of wealth. You can just pick
some of it up and have it! Holy shit!

You can even covet it and save it.
But most of it you just let go,
a re-investment in the infinite treasure.

The economies in which I've had
to participate in sell things the seem
necessary or desirable.  But almost
all these things harbor a tumor
of dullness. That's why advertising

must work so hard to distract
us from the dispirited quality
of goods and services.  As a
practical matter, the more I keep

current on child economics,
the more sanguine I am as I go
undercover into the adult,
capitalist polity. My

code-name today is Shark Teeth.
If you want to join this underground,
you're already a member, and remember:
the wealth we explore, the miraculous
forms that delight us--they're cool
and inexpensive, often totally free.


hans ostrom 2016

"Judged"

To be seen
was to be judged.
To be heard
was to be judged.
To be silent
was to be judged--

judged for seeming
to withdraw from judging.
Thus silence seemed preferable.

To try to perform any task
was to be judged.
To prefer not to try
was to be judged and
to be forced
to try, then judged.

To conform was to be judged.
Not to conform, the same.

Every so often in this climate
thick with judgment, one
of the judges might throw
some praise your way, grudgingly,
as if it were a bone to a dog.

To read was to be judged but not
effectively, for they knew not what
exactly to judge you for, quite.

Thus reading became a pleasurable,
soft fortress. To write

was to have the written judged.
Worth the risk.

Just to be and to try to fill out
your personhood was to be judged.

They taught you how to judge
yourself: oppression, swallowed
and digested.

The energy they spent on judging
and you spent reacting to and evading
judgment: incalcuable; to be judged
a misappropriation.


hans ostrom 2015

I Liked Those Days

[pictured: a potato bug]

Good Ground

I liked those days when I kept my gaze

close to the ground, although I'm sorry

about that sound I repeated in line one.

I saw black beetles, which gave off an

awful stench, and I saw potato-bugs,

large, delicate, decorated, slow--

almost like Art Deco. Yes, I saw

salamanders, those wee amphibians,

amost too gentle for Earth, connoisseurs

of shadow. Sight of scorpions and

black-widow spiders injected me

with terrible lore and jolts of adrenalin.

I saw ants hauling dead moths like

stiff canvas sails, and I watched ant-lions

waiting for prey to slip down the side

of the terrible sandy funnel. I read

Earth closely. It's the best book ever,

after all, especially when you're a kid,

even if you're a kid who likes to read.

I sneaked up on the frog pond and watched

frogs copulate, all of them at once, and

what a cacaphony! Later I saw the

tadpoles, which grew legs--freakier

than any horror movie Hollywood

had to offer the National Broadcasting

Company. I learned to stand tall and notice

humans almost exclusively. This is known

as "joining society" or "growing up" or

whatever term you prefer. It's one of

those necessary things. Life may be

better spent with one's nose close to

soil and stone, eyeballing bugs and

all that stuff. No, I don't mean becoming

a "naturalist." That would ruin everything.

This isn't nostalgia. It's just preference.

Spiders, insects, worms, amphibians,

reptiles, and birds delivered the goods

curiosity sent for from the mail-order

catalogue, is all I'm saying. These

creatures did some weird, interesting

shit, just as a part of their ordinary

day, okay? I'm an adult now, no

major complaints today, but I do

wish for children that they may live

near interesting ground and be

allowed to read it if they want to.

Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom