Dilapidated

The syllables of this word seem
about to come undone.  Anyway,
dilapidated is best if you don't
have to live in it.  Sauntering
around the Sierra Nevada,
I liked seeing shacks that
had stopped lying to themselves.
They spoke highly of the failed,
exhausted miners who'd lived
in them. Weirder were

the cars that people had driven
or pushed into the manzanita brush.
Rust munches them even now.
Yes, and the quiet old imbibers
sitting at the Buckhorn bar,
weary feet in weary shoes
touching brass. These old folks
sipped from a shot glass; and waited.
And today I feel dilapidated.



hans ostrom 2017

Poem By The Side of the Road

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Poem By the Side of the Road

Here is a poem that lives
by the side of a road
in the form of a shack
with a tin chimney stack
and a recluse stirring inside.

Walk on the road past
the shack if you will; see fine
dust rise from your foot-fall,
and if you're brave, shout a call
to the recluse stirring inside.

A poem is a shack, and a
shack is a poem, or
so the tautology flows. What's true
of poems and shacks? Who knows?
The recluse stirring inside.