The Mountains Taught

They protected you with danger,

those High Sierra Mountains.

Cliffs and snakes, rockslides,

flooded rivers, icy narrow

twisting highways, dirt

roads cut casually into hills,

hours between you and a

doctor or hospital. Chainsaws,

knives, guns, lightning,

freezing temperatures. 

Wherever you went, 

whatever you did, you kept

caution in your pocket

like a talisman. You quickly

came to equate useless

risk with lack of thought,

not with bravery. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Found Towns Lost

In daylight tiny
rural towns pretend
not to feel foolish
and depleted. There's
activity. An enthusiastic
conversation or two.
Errands and repairs.

At night streets
(such as they are)
become empty corridors
because people give
up, go inside, and
refuse to be towns-
people, too ridiculous.

Some shops weep,
others moan. If electricity
goes there at all, it
races through power
lines hoping not to be
used there. Before

dawn, animals file
through in a loose
parade.  Raccoons,
stray dogs, feral
cats, owls, and sometimes
a coyote. The stoic church
bell sweats rust, and
all the glory's in ornate
tombstones on a hill.


hans ostrom 2017

The Collector

The Collector

If you’re his wife, you’ve quit

asking why it all piles up out there

in the yard for everyone to see

from the highway.  Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.

Beer signs in neon cursive.  Coke machines,

cars, cars, cars.  You keep the house

and the backyard according to your principles.

You hate the mechanism in men

that drives them to love machinery.

If you’re his dog, you

urinate on tires encircling weeds.

You sniff varieties of rust,

chase squirrels until they disappear,

until you ram your hot wet nose

into angle iron; it all

makes the yard difficult.

Now, supposing you’re the younger son,

you don’t hate him yet.

Your friends think he’s a wealthy man,

a pirate maybe; they beg

their parents to let them come over,

Crawl through doorless cars, turn

cranks, patent imaginary uses

for useless contraptions.  You know

what it’s all for.  It’s there

to look at, to touch; it’s part

of a big landscape that whirls by

every day outside of School.

You’re the collector.  You can’t

help yourself. You’ll fix one thing

and trade it away for three things

you can’t fix.  The dog pisses on it all,

knocks over cans going after squirrels,

laps up rust-water.  You can’t

keep The neighbor-kids away. 

The younger boy, he follows you around

all day asking What’s this for?  What’s

this for?  You can’t understand why

your wife can’t understand why iron

and motors and axles are necessary,                                       

why strewn is the best way to keep

it all in order.

You stare right back at people

who drive by and scowl at your yard.

You know they’re driving junk.

Their houses are filled with junk that works.

You’ll get hold of it soon enough.

Hans Ostrom, from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

"Big Laughter, Small Towns," Hans Ostrom

The very big laughter,
rude/unrefined,
in very small towns
around the world:
it springs, blooms, booms.
Cackling and crackling and thunder.

It needs to make too much of too little,
of nothing sometimes.

Big cities outlaw open laughter,
which is inefficient and free,
not a commodity.

In little out 'the way places,
which are litter left behind,
there's never enough that's funny.
Which is funny.

The very big laughter
in very small towns
might be accompanied
by stomping of boots
on boards, washed clothes
pinned to the wind, and a combo
of broken conveyances.

If you pass through,
laugh, too; not at.


hans ostrom 2014

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost

We were asked to memorize this poem in third or fourth grade. Because we lived in rural snow-country, the subject-matter seemed perfectly ordinary, except by then, no one used horse-drawn buggies.