You Are Here

 YOU ARE HERE

say maps in museums,

parks, and zoos. You

let your fretting mind

go too far out today.

It strode out on a road

to imagined disaster.

It shook its fist

at doom clouds

overhead. It didn't

let your lungs

take a single easy

breath. Bring it back.

Arm in arm, walk

your mind to a settled

space. A present place.

Make it rest. Let it

look at ground or

stones or grass

right in front of it.

In your body, mind.

In your mind, body.

Tell body, tell it:

YOU ARE HERE.

hans ostrom 2024

It May Be Called Here-And-Now

I'm always here--

in this body,
mortgaged to
this place called
Earth. My mind

pretends to
travel on its own
(what a dreamer),
riding off into
its lands of past,
its realms of fantasy,
its rages of ambition
and gripped greed.

It must of course
always return
(until the End, when
it will just go to Stop).

When it's wise,
Mind settles, it
and body in a still
embrace, a loose
duet
amidst the mystery
and flow of Now.

hans ostrom 2023

The Very Nowness of You

 ("The Very Thought of You," a
ballad composed by Ray Noble)


The nowness of you
in your motion and thinking,
the present rectitude of your
existence, with earrings, as
it happens (it happens)--
this is separate from our life
together. Our life together
is an invisible sculpture
representing our ideas
and memories of us. It's
exhibited in the gallery of days.
The you right-now-here is
someone and something
to be discovered, and it seems
I just discovered you one
more time. I find it quite exciting.


hans ostrom 2019