The Collector

The Collector

If you’re his wife, you’ve quit

asking why it all piles up out there

in the yard for everyone to see

from the highway.  Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.

Beer signs in neon cursive.  Coke machines,

cars, cars, cars.  You keep the house

and the backyard according to your principles.

You hate the mechanism in men

that drives them to love machinery.

If you’re his dog, you

urinate on tires encircling weeds.

You sniff varieties of rust,

chase squirrels until they disappear,

until you ram your hot wet nose

into angle iron; it all

makes the yard difficult.

Now, supposing you’re the younger son,

you don’t hate him yet.

Your friends think he’s a wealthy man,

a pirate maybe; they beg

their parents to let them come over,

Crawl through doorless cars, turn

cranks, patent imaginary uses

for useless contraptions.  You know

what it’s all for.  It’s there

to look at, to touch; it’s part

of a big landscape that whirls by

every day outside of School.

You’re the collector.  You can’t

help yourself. You’ll fix one thing

and trade it away for three things

you can’t fix.  The dog pisses on it all,

knocks over cans going after squirrels,

laps up rust-water.  You can’t

keep The neighbor-kids away. 

The younger boy, he follows you around

all day asking What’s this for?  What’s

this for?  You can’t understand why

your wife can’t understand why iron

and motors and axles are necessary,                                       

why strewn is the best way to keep

it all in order.

You stare right back at people

who drive by and scowl at your yard.

You know they’re driving junk.

Their houses are filled with junk that works.

You’ll get hold of it soon enough.

Hans Ostrom, from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

Collecting Time

I keep weeks in closets,
months in a rented garage.

I've misplaced a crucial week
from June 1979.  I can't count
the number of other weeks
I've never gotten my hands on.

Somehow I ended up
with someone's else's
January 1826.  It may well
be my favorite piece.

I had a chance to bid
on a fortnight from 1902,
but three days were missing.

People ask me, they say
why do you collect different
units of time? I wish I had
a good answer. Some day

I'll do something with all
these weeks and months.
In the meantime,
I need to find more space
for all this time.


hans ostrom 2016

"Hinge Collection," by Hans Ostrom

Of course, this is just part
of my collection of hinges.

But it may give you some idea
of the variety and kinds of
hinges,
of their ubiquity, of the
range of their design.

Also, you will likely note that,
unattached to anything
and without box, door, or shutter,
hinges become absurd.

Sometimes I think they
look like awful jewelry
or modestly successful
instruments of annoyance.
I hate them so, my hinges.

hans ostrom 2014