The Curator

 We think we've recalled

the best segments, short

or long, of life. (Let's leave

the worst on a smoking

slag heap as we speak.)

I know I've blanked many

good moments. I wish I'd

had a curator with me along

the ways to say, "This one,

store this one in the lock box."

If I could only poke around there

in memory with a digger's

trowel and brush. Then hold

up a lost treasured memory to the

sun, and smile, and breathe,

and sit to let the whole

recovered scene fill me

like a room accepting pine scent.

hans ostrom 2025

May I Speak To the Past, Please?

I have no doubt that the mobile phone pictured at right will soon seem obsolete or even antique. Maybe it already is the former if not the latter. The velocity of technological obsolescence seems to increase every day. As I think I've noted before, I'm opposed to these wee phones because they discriminate against us thick-fingered ones. When I attempt to hit one button, I usually hit three. It takes me all day to send a two-line text message. I feel like a bear in a sewing-class.


Phoning the Past

I telephoned the past. The number
I reached was no longer in service,
and anyway I'd wanted to reach the past,
not a number. Just as well. What would
I have said? "Hello, I used to live there"?
"Please write me a letter of recommendation
for the future"? The past is a special effect.
When I think about it, it's right beside me.
I reach for it. Then it withdraws miles and
decades instantly, and I'm left in this
lumpy present, which is always beyond
its sell-by-date and curdling into the past.
I read history, but it's a sad substitute
for what happened. So, foolishly, I phoned.
Fine. I made a mistake. That's all in the past.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom