"Stones," Lyrics by Hans Ostrom

 Folk-rock, Latin flavor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUKb7I5VNOA

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon: an epic poem

Time has been scribbling for billions
of years, by our counting, which bores Time.

People from all over the globe
stand at the edge, shed nationality,
and--to a person--speak in hushed

tones, if they speak at all. Cubby
squirrels run around like ushers.
Something mystical rises

with warm air, which crows and hawks
and eagles ride casually. Time itself
is the hero of its poem, carving

granite, sandstone, quartz, limestone,
shale--each layer a chapter unspooling
in reds, roses, purples, browns, blues,

tans, and grays above the serpentine
river channel. Towers and turrets of
sandstone and limestone decorate

the rim. A single tree might spring
from a cup of soil on one of these
spires. The mind inquires, but the canyon

simply is and won't discuss geology.
Time promised the essence of earth--
stone--an epic full of love,

and Time keeps writing it,
as we gawk down and across, breathe
temporary air, take useless photographs.

hans ostrom 2024

The Moon in Those Wild Magma Years

("The Moon May Have Had a Heavy Metal Atmosphere with Supersonic Winds,"
by Lisa Grossman, Science News, June 2017)


We thought we knew the moon:
pale and cool, the hard-working
servant of love, myth, tides,
Americans, and a genre called horror.

Turns out in its youth, the moon
was a crazy ball of magma, so hot
it vaporized metal and forged
an atmosphere, which brought

winds so blastful they made
waves in magma. (Surf this, bro.)
Finally this heat-addicted sphere
went straight, got clean, dried

out.  It slept it off under blankets
of sodium snow. When it awoke, it
had pock-marks. With chill indifference
it received cordial light from the sun.



hans ostrom 2017

The River Moved

(image: Tower Rock, Perry County, Missouri)
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The River Moved
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I get used to watching rivers move from up
to down. Then someone will remind me,
"The river used to be here until it moved,"
and I picture rivers walking slowly across
plains, opening another canyon for themselves,
going underground for a spell, or running into
dams--nibbled by turbines and turned into
a lake that sits and waits but never loses
its desire to find a sea. The way rivers move's
a note slowly written in cursive to time, whose
mail historians and geologists open. For instance
the famous river-boat that sank's buried on
a dry plain now because the big river moved.
"It's just a grave now," someone said. "Bones
are down there, remember. No one wants to dig."
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunset Strip

(image: a section of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood)

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Sunset Boulevard

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Sunset Boulevard is asphalt and concrete rolled

onto crushed rock. The rest is mirage. If you forget

this, then Hollywood's done one of its jobs. Above

the line of boulevard, wealth's fortifications protrude

from high ground. Below the line, a stew of stucco cooks.

Simmering, it releases gray vapors. Conduits of

sewage, electricity, gas, and such connect it all--

networks of basics, expelled and consumed.

Most buildings and signs on Sunset seem weary

in spite of designed protestations to the contrary.

People look hunted, haunted, or harried, in spite

of display, tattoos, feints, fashion, and façades.

Beneath the boulevard lie geological formations.

On top is us, the decoration. We're the close-up.

Time's the long shot in which all of this will be

out of frame.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom