Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Bookshelves

In a musty library room
in a friend's old abode,
dark wooden shelves,
floor to ceiling, look like
rows of secrets, willing
to be opened like gates
and doors and windows
and minds. To reach

for one book, clothbound
with no dust jacket, and 
take it from its snug space,
fulfills a desire. For what?
You don't entirely know,
do you? But there it is,

the book, quiet and pliant
in your hands, centuries
of the printing art floating
invisibly behind it. The rest
of the books on all the shelves
and walls look on,
like spectators at a stadium--
but they're the quietest
audience ever. A clock's
bell dings, softly, softly. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Sunday, January 14, 2018

At a Reservoir of Inquiry

Warm winter day at
a California university:
this one's origins lie
in agriculture. Between
academic terms, the campus
is deserted. Squirrels

maintain their studious
consumption of acorns
raining from valley oaks
that have mused over
millions of scholars
down the decades.

One squirrel runs
up the steps of the Success
Center, which is closed.
The current campus
populace will flood in
soon, filling the reservoir
of inquiry as feudal
stupidity reigns on the
other side of the continent.



hans ostrom 2018

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Transformation: Professor

When I'm a professor, I pass by colleagues
who have plotted my death a time or two.
I like to keep my feelings hard and polished.

Other people  follow me so they can ask me questions
aimed either at tripping me up (call it
the eternal dissertation-defense) or finding
out if I accept late work. I lose my keys.

Feeling around for them in a pocket
of a tweed coat, my hand touches
dead butterflies, paper clips, and
sawdust. I sit myself in the sun
like a house plant, for I just want
to know things, I am so very weary
of being responsible for knowing things.

But then. (O, Transition!) Then
I see students walking, talking
in the sun next to brick buildings
near green trees.  Regardless
of who they are and where they
come from, I see in their affect

one thing I know for sure: a
knowledge-quest is the very best
of all human adventures, and to be
young amidst that quest is to feel
(oh, yes, I remember) as if your
mind can grasp all things.


hans ostrom 2016