Death and Joy

for the memory of W.B.

A longtime historian
friend, gold-standard trained
at Harvard, Cambridge, Yale,
has gone down hard:

neurological nightmare:
bodily and mental collapse.
Before the finale,
he said he was losing

big chunks of memory
like a glacier
calving blocks of ice.
Flip-flopping like a minor

sea monter in a water-
aerobics class to
"maintain health," you
obsess about your

friend's brutal rotting
and death. You look over
to another pool and see
a Black grandpa holding

a toddler in a swim-class.
He's shaved bald
with a trimmed gray beard:
a griot look you like.

You saw him before
and said, "I have a grandson
that age--isn't it great?"
"It is the greatest," he said.

Now you see again
his look of supreme joy
as he helps the kid
float. Joy and vicious

decay, along the way.
Are they supposed
to balance out?
Well, it's not math--

it's life. And death. Just
the way things are. You're glad
you glanced over to that other
blue pool as you wallowed.

Hans Ostrom 2026

"Like a Dog Outside a Bar," by Hans Ostrom (Lyrics) and Reno Mapes (Music).

Rondeau for a Father's Hat

And what am I to do with my Dad's hat?

Always a hat--he never wore a cap.
After he died, I've kept it all these years--
A little token of him, it appears--
A cloth thing under which he sat.

His body was cremated, so that's that.
To me his soul's a mystery, not a fact.
While I get old and face some stern cold fears,
What is it I'm to do with my Pa's hat?

I have been charged with being a pack-rat.
I'm sentimental, unlike our deadpan cat.
For me, things link to people, it appears,
And maybe soothe a bit some grieving tears.
"Just let it go": advice that sounds so flat
Regarding what to do with Father's hat.

Hans Ostrom 2024

No, Not Yet

Of course I've talked

to people about you
and your death but
the only person I really
want to talk to is you.

This conversation
that cannot happen
perpetuates grief,
as a cold May keeps
Winter alive. That's

all right. I prefer
feeling the cold
and the ache of loss
to feeling nothing,
to "moving on," as they say.

I prefer not to surrender
in the face of life's and death's
obliteration of people.
No, not yet: I still want
to feel the loss of you.

hans ostrom 2023

My Father Wading Toward Me

My father was from that generation of men

who always wore a hat outside.

After he died, I dreamt repeatedly
that he was wading up a small river
toward me, looking to me for help.

We didn't speak. I feared I was
failing him. He wasn't wearing a hat.

Where was his hat?

hans ostrom 2022

For Charles Epps

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For Charles Epps

(1953-1971)

What's left these 38 years after Charlie
died? The same as what was left a minute
after he died: an avalanche of absence.
I've visited the grave. I always go alone. I
let morbidity, a pettiness, arise, think
of what's under ground, including
the baseball uniform in which they put
his body. It's easy to move past small,
awful thoughts. What's left to resolve?

Everything. He ought to be alive. God
knows that as well as I. My knowledge
stops there. I don't know why he died,
only how, when, where, and with whom--
Sonny Ellis. Their death numbed,
scandalized, and scarred me, but so what?
I got to live at least 38 years more
than they. When I die, so will my grief,

and so it goes. Like an instinctive,
migratory mourner, I think of Charlie
at least four times a year and every May
and try to think of something more to say.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Grief-Bushes

(image: boxwood hedges; the Latin name for boxwood is Buxus japonica, I think)

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Bold Talk

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I buried several sadnesses, not knowing

they considered themselves to be seeds.

They broke through ground and grew

into grief-bushes that shadows fertilized.

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Today, I had about enough of them,

so I snipped and chopped. I yanked

out roots. I stood there like a plow-horse

lathered in sweat, too tired to be sad

or happy, with just enough energy left

to vow never to sow sadness again.

Yes, I vowed. Bold talk.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom