Beside a Farm Pond

On the green pond

faint ripples roll slowly,

just kiss the bank. Beside

this quiet water, you don't

have to pretend to know.

Unseen fish snooze

in mud. Frogs--they grunt

and chirp. Birds flit and fly

and riff their trills. It isn't

nature out here. It isn't

anything you have to name.

Eyes wide open, you sit

in nowhere. You're here, it

seems. What seems? It. 

hans ostrom 2022

Bass and Bass

4:32 a.m., can't sleep,
can't stop thinking about
bass and bass. Bass guitar,
bass fishing. I assemble
do-it-yourself-dreams--
a lake where stringed
instruments swim, leap
for bugs while cranking
thudding beats. An

orchestra full
of slime-scaled instruments
playing Debassy's Wildlife
Biology Suite--the
audience gowned out
in mosquito nets and
hip waders. I order

my mind to order
itself: Stop this!
It opens its wide mouth
and laughs, teeth full
of black musical notes.


hans ostrom 2020

"Fin," by Hans Ostrom

I grew a fin.
It helps me swim.

The wife of many years
divorced me. She
thought the issue of a fin
was insurmountable.

I had to learn
to sleep on
my side or belly.
Also, clothes:
you can imagine.

Otherwise,
I don't care.
Everybody's
got something.
I have a fin.


hans ostrom 2014

"What Did the Fisherman Say to the Fish?" by Hans Ostrom

1. Nothing.
2. "There you are, you little bastard, got you."
3. "You really swallowed that thing, didn't you?"
4. "My brain is more highly evolved than yours, and this is proof!"
5. "Have I caught you at a bad time?"
6. "I don't know why I fish."
7. ("'m drunk.")
8. ("How does it feel to drown in air?")
9. Nothing

People Who Go Fishing

We sit. We stand. We walk
and wade and float and wait.
We work with things
from a diminutive realm:

string, bits of cloth, feathers,
miniature coins and jewelry,
lead pearls, worms, tiny eggs,
eyelets, small wheels, thin sticks.

Like psychologists, geologists,
and those obsessed with Hell,
we're obsessed with a submerged
dominion, about which we invent
myths, toward which we harbor
resentments, and into which
we cast gleaming desires.
We are deceivers of water-creatures.
We are lords of the sky-world.

We do not travel water to get somewhere.
To us, Odysseus was an abject fool.
Our world is lyric, not epic.  Ahab
was a reckless tourist. Jonah was bait.
And yes, we know whales aren't fish,
so be quiet.  Ssshhh! Did you hear that?
Did you feel that? We live for small
signs of animated resistance, for
the life on the line.  No, it is not
time to go. There is plenty of light left.


Hans Ostrom, 2012