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

"The Treasure," by Rupert Brooke

As My Generation Dies

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Generation Blues


Death's eating into my generation
as it's done with every other one.

I knew it was coming but am
transfixed and awfully grieved still.

A heart-attack here, cancer there,
suicide, accidents, crime . . . "He wasn't

feeling well, so he went up to his
room. They found him dead a few

hours later. Stroke, they think."
The funerals mostly bore me.

Boredom makes me feel guilty,
although the one spoken of isn't

there, and if she or he were, he
or she would be bored, too.

Eventually I'm moved. There is
that one point in every funeral.

The generation blues is an exercise
in sitting still, as in kindergarten.

It's about wondering who's next
and thinking nothing matters--

until after the funeral, when again
we get caught up in life, which matters,

until the next one we know dies, and
we become still again, or the next one

is me, is I, who, dead, will get
instantly and forever still and might

be talked about to people who are
getting fidgety, thinking when will it end?


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom