Overnight at Haypress Creek

We hiked into the deep ravine

of a quick, cold creek, High Sierra.
Found a place to camp and caught
a couple trout to eat. Evening:

lit a small fire to cook the fish
and heat some beans. Ate, then
doused the fire and slipped
into sleeping bags. Night:

wilderness became immense,
swallowed any sense of self-importance.
A world of creatures came alive,
bears and bobcats and bats,
deer, raccoon, rodents, and night-bugs.

Stirring in the brush, snapped sticks,
owl-hoots and the haunting yips
of coyotes coming through the canyon.
Walls of tall conifers turned black,
their furred edges outlined against
a star-choked sky, where meteors
scratched glow-trails close and far away.

Fatigue smothered awe. We slept....
Woke to a rotated sky and a risen moon
bearing down on us like one mad headlight
from a nightmare. Cricket choruses,
unceasing. Freshest air filling lungs.
And the creek: talking, talking, telling
tales of time we could never comprehend.

hans ostrom 2022

The Skipper

on a fishing boat

all day, you feel time
dissolve in water.

offbeat swells shrug
the craft. sun glare
stuns. you sense

the sea's in touch
with forever,
a distant cousin.

headed back to port,
you try to remind
yourself you're you.

gulls shriek, nobody
talks, land magnets
the boat close.

wobbly on a dock,
you again accept
your position: the

skipper of your life.

hans ostrom 2021

© right now      

The Legend of the River Liffey Pike

And here we will pass on
the tale of the River Lifffey
Pike. This pike was so big
(so big!) that in order to
change its direction in the
Liffey, it had to perform
a three-point turn like
a black limousine. And this
is as true as it possibly can be.

Over many years, all the
anglers around Leixlip
and Straffan tried to catch
the pike but the giant just
slammed into their legs,
ate lines and leaders,
snapped fishing poles
like twigs, and threatened
children and nuns.

Finally one day the
notorious poacher Bon
hooked the massive mean
pike with sturdiest leader,
line, and pole. A dry
fly he was using. Bon
fought the fish, fought
it but couldn't reel it
in. So he went to the bank
with his pole and circled
a large tree many times,
docking the River Liffey
Leviathan. Then Bon

clambered up the bank
and lumbered is way
to the Salmon Leap Tavern
in Leixlip. He recruited
a band of Guinness-lit
lads to help him haul the
big pike in. Bon led

the laughing band down
to the bank, only to find
that the leader, the line,
the pole, the tree, and the fish
had all disappeared.

So big, so large, so grand
was the River Liffey Pike
that it had hooked the famous
poacher Bon, played him
for an optimist (all anglers
are optimists, they must be),
reeled him in, and dropped
him in the creel of local legend.

On your travels you may find
yourself in Leixlip on Cooldrinagh
Road, Lucan Demesne, County
Kildare, Ireland. Stop by the Salmon
Leap Tavern, it's there, and after
you've settled in with a pint
and made the acquaintance
of those in attendance, ask them if
they've heard of the River Liffey
Pike that gathered in the leader,
the line, the pole, and the tree
and set itself free from the infamous
poacher, Old Bon, who upon returning
from his loss, stood all the lads
to a pint and started to tell
them a story they already knew
and added some details, a few,
just a few.


hans ostrom 2019

"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

At Lake Polyester

I was fly-casting aspersions

into the fetid waters

of Lake Polyester when

a squad of bankers

bum-rushed me

and knocked me about.

“Stay off our land, drifter,”

they said. I let them say

it twice more, for practice,

and then said, “This isn’t

your land, and I’m not

a drifter.” They said Oh

and ran fast to find

legal counsel. Several

women studying their

own voluptuousness

waved to me from

across the lake. Sunlight

on their curves and

globes became a

sermon, and I believed.


hans ostrom 2013

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

Fleeting Real

*
*
*
*
*
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*
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Fleeting Real

There will always be time to talk
of politics, money, and law. Speak
of one, and you speak of all three.
See the gray cat sitting on a blue
chair? That's where we might begin.

We might also speak of hand-carved
spoons, fossils in a dream, or languid
lovers' restless fingers. The rest
is history, a kind of tidied up
lie or a molten sack of evil,
depending upon your point of skew.

A millenium's sadness sways
when a horse smells lightning.
Let's imbibe words on matters
such as these. The fleeting is
the real, as is a fantasy of
reeling in a moment that glanced
at memory's bait, declined to bite,
and dove to settle in the murk
far below an angler's flaccid geometry.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom