From Time to Time

The phrase "from time to time"

makes my mind see stepping stones

set wide-apart. Circles of light

on stages. Old pulpy catalogues

and sports newsprint pages,

imploded miners' shacks, 

and burial mounds, retired profs

(strangers now on what they'd thought

of as "their" campuses) taking

hard steps into a library. "From

time to time" makes me sad,

forlorn, and blue--but glad

to be alive today though feeling still

a chill on back and shoulders as Earth

spins me toward my personal last time. 

hans ostrom 2024

The Owl

As silently as an untold secret,

an owl passed over our heads
into trees and out of our view
forever. People, creatures,

and things visit our lives,
then leave. Come in, go out.
And each of us passes by
or into lives of others,
and then we leave. They
forget, we forget, and then
once upon a future, we die.

And the unseen owl has seized
something to eat & takes it
to the nest in a forest beyond dreaming.

hans ostrom 2024

Abandoned Cistern

A few raindrops 

make it through

brush overgrowing

an ancient cistern.

They make the 

slightest sound

as they hit cool

still water. The

cistern used to be

famous. People 

gathered there. Some

were important

and carried themselves

so. Posture, gestures,

clothes, high talk.

They knew and didn't

know that one day

it would be as if

they'd never been 

anyone, anywhere, 

anything. 

"Heraclitus," by William Conroy

Two-stanza poem about the philosopher (c. 535-475 B.C.) who believed the universe was made of fire and changed constantly. He's also given credit for the admonition, "You can't step in the same river twice" [because the river constantly changes form]. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem called "That Nature Is a Heraclitan Fire," managing both to agree with Heraclitus and to assert the Judeo-Christian God's supremacy. Heraclitus lived in area called "Caria," so the speaker of the poem calls him "my Carian guest." The area was in what is now Turkey, and it was controlled by Persians at the time. This poem is very pro-bird.

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ARAfSswCGk

Briefly

Many molecules
briefly in circulation
so as to articulate
a body-plan, which is
embedded in the material
itself (which is like wood
turning itself into
a house): that's me,
temporarily.


hans ostrom 2019

Of Time and the Prairie

There's a lot of prairie
under all those cities.
It isn't waiting--that's
a sad human thing. It
is, however, prepared--
ready for any histories
that come along to replace
the previous ones.



hans ostrom 2017

Allegory at Alpine Elevation

You're standing outside in the dark.
In the mountains, alpine elevation.
The cold wind's blowing hard enough
to keep the crust on the snow,
and to blur your vision, so the stars
seem momentarily to reel.

You say a word, any word,
to yourself but out loud. Wind
takes it from your mouth so fast
the word never gets fully formed.
All evidence of your having
spoken vanishes. You recognize

what has happened as the briefest
allegory about ego's status
in the flow of matter. You go
back inside. You're glad for the
warmth. Still the light and things
inside seem trivial and doomed.
You feel embarrassed for them.



hans ostrom 2017

The Vast Hall

Another group has rented
the vast hall here. We must leave.

We didn't know this day would come.
We knew a day would.

Yes, of course I'm confused
and afraid, as if I'd been hollowed

out and panic had been poured in.
I'm also greedy for more time

in this grand space. That's so small
of me.  A door will open,

and a door will close. The simplicity
of it is appalling.



hans ostrom2017

Cool Reaper

We who will be harvested
are understandably grim
about the prospect. That
doesn't mean the reaper--
constant change--is grim.

The reaper's merely
impersonal, although our
misery is not. That
coolness chills the blade
and menaces the hopeful,
who are hopeless.


hans ostrom 2016

"Recent Storms"

The man in Maui said the recent storms
had ripped away sand and shortened beaches.
We were looking at one of the beaches.
It was narrow all right.

In what's called the distance, a humpback
whale lifted itself up, curved, went
back under, flipping its tail
in so doing: a thick, black Y.

Not incidentally at all,
a minah bird hopped onto grass
carrying a dead dragon fly.
The bird swallowed it,

taking the bulbous head first.
It stretched tall to get it all
down the pipe and expressed
liquid defecation in a quick

Latinate stream onto green.
We live inside a multitude
of dynamic systems, the man
said. He was homeless, and two

security-guards eyed him, us. That
we do, sir, I said. And
I gave him a fiver for his
journey, and everything changes form.


Hans Ostrom 2015

"Mere Dissolution," by Hans Ostrom

Too tired to attend
the Entropy Conference in Antwerp,
Professor A.P. Ledlox stayed home.

He sipped cryptic broth
and fell apart emotionally.

He stared out the window
at an alleged landscape
(smears of gray and brown).

Oh, for a whiff of
a young woman's neck, oh
for a swim in an alpine lake, oh
for chrissakes shut up, he
told himself: It's

dissolution, mine. Yearning
will not halt or decorate it.


hans ostro 2014

"Between Two Worlds," by Lord Byron

Canto XV, Stanza 99, of Don Juan:

"It Will Not Change," by Sara Teasdale

All Right, Now

Having successfully eluded
fame, he took
a long nap
and awoke refreshed.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Last Invocation," by Walt Whitman

Because Reality Doesn't Tire

I moved a stretched-out worm
from wet concrete to dirt. Heard
a U.S. Air Force plane scrape
the space between here and that
imaginary sky. Noticed how
people do what they can
to maintain wood and masonry
exteriors of their abodes but
eventually surrender to stains,
cracks, rot, moss, and grit.
Because reality doesn't tire
and we do, it's easier to watch TV
and recover from work than to work
on shelter's exterior all the
goddamned time. It just is.


Hans Ostrom, 2012