A Moment in a City

A seagull in silhouette--

it glides across sky's last light.
Unsheltered, a woman stirs
beneath blankets in a shop's
entryway. Uncovered,
her face is leathered and red.
Cars roll by, roll on.
The sound of their engines underlies
all we hear on the sidewalk.

We're among the living today,
the ones cast in this play,
humanity, but local to this moment's
scene. The shapes of moments
shift constantly. None of us passing
helps the woman. Should I go back
and give her money at least?
The shadow of the seagull is long gone.

hans ostrom 2023

In A City

In A City


Anyway, you're in whatever city the city is,
the one next to a harbor or a river or both or
a lake, toxic water at any rate, and of course
a big percentage of the buildings are tall--
density is money--and prestige is squeezed
into selected leased spaces, and you stop,
take effects in via senses conditioned by
memory, reason, digital imaging, and
Pavlovian repetition, and in spite of it all,
you think, "Well, I'm glad no overt war appears
to be occurring here, and I can breathe, kind
of, and these people sure work hard, but this
isn't very good, this spectacle, this big-ass
urban production, this extraordinary
collection of hard surfaces, motors, pipelines,
wires, and compressed gases," and you yawn,
and a stranger is gratuitously but unoriginally
rude to you in a way that elicits pity for
yourself, the other person, and everyone,
including the bustlers bustling past.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom