"On the Death of Friends in Childhood," by Donald Justice

Headwaters

The very last of all his aunts

and uncles have now died.

He thinks a lot about the dead
these days. Pictures them alive,
laughing, frowning, working,
teasing, busy maybe thinking
of all the dead they missed.

He's catching up to them,
the dead people he knew well.
He knows he isn't far behind.
He sees he's on that part

of the trail that's gone past
all the waterfalls, up near
the soggy grassland, the
headwaters of the stream--

yes, up where the sky
suddenly opens, accepting all.

hans ostrom 2025

Caramel and Other Surprises

Each day life presents

several surprises. Canned

peas sit on a different shelf

at the grocery store. About

80 million peeple us their votes

to make a rapist, fraud, and 

white supremacist a president--

and they expect good things

to come of it.  

A longtime companion says

she never liked caramel. Ever.

You accuse yourself of stupidity,

therefore. A friend you haven't

seen in years dies, surprise,

and you look away from the 

informing email and out a window

at gray and sigh--all you can manage.

hans ostrom 2025

It Burns Low

 Today I've been talking

to dead people. To my Pops,
who stays alive through
a post-mortem force of will.
And to Ma, who is I'm sure
glad to be past life. To an
aunt or two and friends
who went away too, too early.

To James Baldwin, whom
I met once but who wonders
who is this person? I tell him
his book, The Fire Next Time,
which I found in the back of a
classroom and read at 17,
changed my life. No response.

I spoke briefly to some people
who went out of their way
to be unkind to me. I find
I didn't have much to say
to them. Nor did they to me.
They are smoke, and truly,
my own fire burns low.

hans ostrom 2025

From Time to Time

The phrase "from time to time"

makes my mind see stepping stones

set wide-apart. Circles of light

on stages. Old pulpy catalogues

and sports newsprint pages,

imploded miners' shacks, 

and burial mounds, retired profs

(strangers now on what they'd thought

of as "their" campuses) taking

hard steps into a library. "From

time to time" makes me sad,

forlorn, and blue--but glad

to be alive today though feeling still

a chill on back and shoulders as Earth

spins me toward my personal last time. 

hans ostrom 2024

Wells Fargo Employee Found Dead at Office Desk Four Days After Clocking In

My feeble hopes embarrass me:

that she died quickly with minimal pain

(define "minimal"). That she found

the tunnel of light pleasing. That

friends found her pets, if any, alive

and saw to their care. That . . . .

She clocked in but didn't clock out.

She sat alive, then dead, for four days

while electrons of her colleagues

who worked from home flitted around her. 

"There are worse ways to go," I think,

followed by "Oh, shut up." Media told

the story only because it

is click-bait. I clicked. Her name

is Denise Prudhomme.

Two-Faced Time

Time, the vicious versatile thug:

pickpocket, shoplifter, burglar,

armed robber, assassin, dictator . . . .

Why can't Time get a real job

like the rest of us?

Time, robust provider:

opener of space for life.

Enabler of Evolution. 

Angel of music. Parent

of our necessary illusions.

Kind casino boss, who gives us

good chances to win 

encounters with the Mystery

that may be God.

hans ostrom 2024

Where the Roads Go

 And soon the roads will take you to

The place that has no roads

And there you will be lost to time,

Old traveler. The forest will absorb you.

(The roads themselves will be absorbed.)

The birds are always well aware

They must make room for other birds.

And every raging storm

Leaves codes for future storms.

The continent of language

Your brain has built itself

To let you play with signs

And sounds will vanish--yes,

The moment your mind leaves 

Its road, your unique ways 

Of seeing, saying--indeed,

The World you birthed--

Will vanish like one breath

Into the air of all the breaths

Breathed ever in their time. 

hans ostrom 2024

Escapes

An elephant escaped

the Point Defiance Zoo

and strode the streets

of Tacoma briskly, briefly,

as if going to work.

At a summer party

my parents threw, outside

in the High Sierra, the ever-

silent plumber, Otto,

sipped whiskey. He

saw a horse come up 

to the pasture fence.

Otto climbed the fence

& leapt on the horse, 

which galloped and tossed

him off. Otto got up,

came back, climbed over,

and sipped more whiskey.

First time

her husband struck her,

she loaded the two kids

and some luggage 

in the Chevrolet and drove

away, {No more of that shit,}

she said to her friend.

The old woman 

who had fought cancer

for five years lay

in a hospice bed,

comatose--but suddenly

woke--tried to get up

and run away. One last

attempt before

entering the light. 

hans ostrom 2024

Interruptions

You're a minor Beat Movement poet

in 1961, and you get up to leave a bar
in Berkeley, California, but the bartender
doesn't know who you are, and he yells,
"You forgot to pay!"

No doubt you're not a minor Beat Movement
poet, and it's 2023 or 2122, and you lift
a first spoon of homemade soup
toward your mouth, but someone
raps on your door like a monstrous
woodpecker on a beetle-infested pine.

You're anybody somewhere sometime,
soaring in new love but now brought down
to sickening earth by the buckshot of
betrayal. Or required brain surgery
shunts your rolling-along-all-right life
to a rusty side-track where
you live in a fog of recovery.

Yep, life's a series of interruptions
interrupted by Death. Sometimes
the shock is so great you and your
family have to become refugees,
who huddle and pray on a rubber
boat slammed by cold waves.

hans ostrom 2023

Treat It

Forty

thousand people
in the U.S. get shot
per year. Guns, guns, guns.
Symptomatic, I think, of an awful
disease. Oh, treat
it, please.

Hans Ostrom 2023

Not a Waste

 Thinking of Ann Marsh Monroe, 1956-2022

In a dark hall
of memory,
I see your face,
your lovely face.

In moonlight
of nostalgia,
I kiss your lips
and taste your taste.

I just heard you died.
Our love, long gone.
But no, that wild, weird
time was not a waste.

hans ostrom 2023

She Liked Inspector Maigret

 Elise Moeller Ostrom, 1927-2023

When her husband my uncle died,
I sent her a note and a mystery novel.
When next I saw her, she said,
"Thanks for your note and for not
sending me a goddamned book on grief."

She has just died, age 95, after decorously
drinking a lot of beer and devouring
crime novels for seven decades.
I never saw her not composed. She
saved that for privacy.

Her opinions firm as tungsten,
she voted liberal and pro-union
but wanted results, not fools
prattling ideology.

Her father was a football coach
and she married one, followed
fanatically the S.F. 49ers. Into old age,

she grew flowers, stacked her own
firewood, shoveled snow, and
fed migrating doves. We liked
each other a lot because, I think,
we liked words. Love? Grief?

Well, sure, but with restraint.

hans ostrom 2023

Actually, No

As time (as we think of it)
rolls and spins along,
the maybes morph into nevers:

Maybe I'll visit Albania
or Paraguay one day: No,
never. Maybe I'll see one
of my first-ever loves again,
just one more time--
yes, perhaps her--the one who
lives in Long Beach. No, never,
for she just died.

hans ostrom 2022

"Counting the Beats," by Robert Graves

A love-and-death poem by Robert Graves, short lyric. Reading and video:

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx7ArBNVUBo

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

Old Sweet Song

(for J.)

I'm grateful for whatever
time we have.
I hope we soon don't have
to say goodbye.

Time is short
but love is long.
Contentment
is not wrong. 

It's been the dearest privilege
knowing you.
You've loved me and I'm still
not certain why.

Time is short
but love is long.
Contentment
is not wrong. 


hans ostrom 2020

His Final Thought

Just before he died
he realized nothing
was heavy or dark
and everything was
light. And light.



hans ostrom 2019

Respectfully Absurd

Rituals of remembrance,

so weary, so salty-sweet.

Beside an open grave,

someone says words 

about a dead man whose

corpse lies in a manufactured

box nearby. The memories

of him will never be riper

than they are now. No one

will think to recall him after

a few months, it not days, if

not . . . Even at the moment

how many listeners are 

thinking of other things, 

or wondering what the point

of funeral services is? "Funeral

services" has the ring 

of American assembly lines. 

That's all right. The frail,

exhausted nobility of mournful

practices preserves their worth.

They're respectfully absurd.

hans ostrom 2019

A Statistic and I

Someone told me that
on average 153,424 people
die each day. Globally.
That's a terrible thing
to tell someone, I thought,
before thinking of the
galaxies of memory
the minds of 153,424
contained before they
vanished.


hans ostrom 2019