Escapes

An elephant escaped

the Point Defiance Zoo

and strode the streets

of Tacoma briskly, briefly,

as if going to work.

At a summer party

my parents threw, outside

in the High Sierra, the ever-

silent plumber, Otto,

sipped whiskey. He

saw a horse come up 

to the pasture fence.

Otto climbed the fence

& leapt on the horse, 

which galloped and tossed

him off. Otto got up,

came back, climbed over,

and sipped more whiskey.

First time

her husband struck her,

she loaded the two kids

and some luggage 

in the Chevrolet and drove

away, {No more of that shit,}

she said to her friend.

The old woman 

who had fought cancer

for five years lay

in a hospice bed,

comatose--but suddenly

woke--tried to get up

and run away. One last

attempt before

entering the light. 

hans ostrom 2024

The Horses of Summer

The horses of summer

flew through the pastures,

tails  and manes

terrific in the wind.

In the overfull cities,

the horses of summer

lugged vegetable carts

and beer barrels,

hauled carriages of wealth

and tourists, endured

heavy policemen.

High on an alpine ranch,

one old horse stood in a time-grayed

barn as lightning burnt

the sky and thunder rattled

boards and bones.

She ate hay, farted,

and slept. 

And in the ignited

desert, a spotted horse

drank deeply from

a black trough and flinched

at the gunfire. 

hans ostrom 2023

One Way or Another

We rode the horses
to the top of the hill
where the blond dry grass
shakes in breezes.

We looked down
on the town,
its forever shabbiness,
everyone in it
exhausted and resentful.

We're just visitors here
now. Our cheer
isn't appreciated.
No one here cares
about our lives elsewhere,
and we can't say
why they should.

We thought of letting
the horses run free.
But they live in the town
too. We rode them
back, wiped and combed
them, shoveled out
their stalls, fed and watered
them. I slipped them
the last of the carrots,
bright orange like stove
fires.

We got in the car
and drove out of town,
maybe for the last time,
maybe not. The thing is,
we don't care, one way
or another.


hans ostrom 2020

Palomino Summer

I drank and drank and drank
sunshine.

                I walked down
powder-dust ruts of an uncle's
dirt road and found that palomino.

Blond horse, quick as fragrance. Blond
summer, baking brown mud. Blond
grass, insane with grasshoppers.
Brown me in the the midst,

palomino's mane brushing my arms
in the rush of gallop. In the woods
next to the ranch, rattlesnakes

coiled, field mice inside them.
Pine trees leaned toward
the pasture I rode in.


hans ostrom 2019

Hawks Don't Often Perch That Low

A hawk, bedecked in variegated
brown feathers, had parked on a low,
thick fence post. I walked by on
a muddy road. The hawk ignored

me, also two horses grazing in rain.
What did domestication and the
privileges of an American horse
farm have to do with his carved

beak and mythic talons? Just before
the bird leaned forward, pre-flight,
I squinted to see through rain
and wondered what a hawk's

thought looks like. The gone
hawk left that topic open,
and I went on plodding
down the sodden road.


hans ostrom 2018

Teaching

You may lead a horse to water.  The horse
may not be thirsty. Or the intuitive animal
might smell something wrong about the
water--or be spooked off it for another
reason.  The horse may also have no
particular cause to trust you. If the
horse doesn't drink this time, it may
drink later, and it will probably remember
where this trough or pond or creek is.

So don't be in a rush to give up,
declare failure (the horse's), and
congratulate yourself for doing
all you could.  Try a different way.
Look for different water.  And anyway,
people aren't horses, so there's that.


Hans Ostrom, 2012