Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Hello, Stranger

 (with apologies to Barbara Lewis, who recorded the song "Hello, Stranger," in the 1960s)


As I walked under
a Norwegian spruce
today, a dove cooed
three times.

It sounded like someone
blowing carefully
on a conch shell:
the hard c in coo

had dissolved.
Three musical notes:
what a nice thing
to say to a stranger

walking by, I thought--
how sweetly polite,
how tonal, coaxing a
smile out of me.


hans ostrom 2023

Uphill

July heat hangs over the bottom
of the hill, scratching at me
like an old wool blanket.

Crows that aren't picking
mites from feathers
leave their beaks open

to cool down. Mid-way
up the climb, I flag
& my vision gets a little

weird. Dehydration.
I sit on a a dark grey
rock under a tree.

Finally I make it to
the top of the hill:
a breeze kicks in.

I feel better but still
old & I buy a bottle
of water, splashing

some on my hot
neck and forehead,
guzzling the rest.

People, shrubs, buildings,
buses: though brightly lit,
they all, every one, look tired.


hans ostrom 2023

Monday, January 4, 2021

Lost

don’t go by what I say

go by how the map reads

I must have lost our way

the map is where it leads


also, I’m not your guide

in fact I don’t know why

we’re walking side by side

or who let out that cry

Friday, May 4, 2018

Consider It Done (Hike Haiku)

as we hiked I said
I like you & promised to write
a haiku for you


hans ostrom 2018

Friday, June 9, 2017

William Tell Ravine

(a tributary of the North Yuba River, Sierra County, California)

Before he'd heard anything about Switzerland, Schiller,
Rossini & stuff, he'd looked across the river from the house
at the long white beard of William Tell Falls. The sheer-drop
ravine seemed perpendicular.  No home for trout.  Im-

pulsively, as usual, he decided to hike up there when he was
17. He headed out, crossed the river, climbed straight up,
more laddering than walking. Ravine was path as rock
and manzanita brush walled the sides. He made it

as far as the flat pool the falls slapped in a-rhythmic
pulses. Sounds of that constant collision careened
around the stone box. There was no climbing further.
In soaked jeans and wet boots, legs loaded up

with lactic acid, he slithered down like an arthritic
snake, satisfied to have spied on a geologic scene,
to have introduced himself to William Tell Ravine,
and to have seen water and rock in their own time.


hans ostrom 2017