Lime Cove

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Lime Cove


Charlotte sings a lullaby
to her bedroom, making sure
it's slow asleep before she
quicks herself away. Charlotte
and the night are in a kind
of clanky love. She says
to her doorbell, "Please come
in," and washes from it all
those oily index-finger prints.

Solicitations, she thinks, take up
so much of our lives. Asking,
answering. "God," she asks,
"help me to find a place in pause,
a site, a situation, for it seems
I am defeated by the business
of each day."  Charlotte knows

she hasn't earned or isn't due
a special treatment. She also
knows she isn't out of line
in asking for some cease of
time, a cove carved out of
lime, where a pod of echoes
soaks itself in brine.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Sleeping Seaside

Sleeping Seaside


The sea can give only so much. It shrugs
tides inland as far as possible. Then its
conscience, the moon, urges caution. What's
left behind on strands looks broken or worn.
Anyway it's exiled from origin and function:
a cracked shell, a driftwood plank.
A receding tide's a kind of regret.

Hearing the sound of surf all night erodes
the will's high bank. That's when a tide
of sleep advances. That's when you wade
in the water, child, and shrug off the day.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom