Carbon-Neutral Dreams

Around midnight, I look outside

and see small solar lamps in the garden
glow. Daytime, the lamps
stuff a little sunlight in their pouches,
which at night they empty.

Soft and unassuming, the light
massages flowers and stones.
Seeing the lamps stirs some hope in me--
not much, but these days even
some is welcome. i stumble

back to bed to sleep and,
like solar lamps, to release soft
neural light into carbon-neutral dreams.

hans ostrom 2024

From a Diary of the Plague Year (7)

I went outside in the dark just
to be out. A warm western wind
tricked me into thinking,
Everything's going to be all right.
It's good to fall for that intuitive
prank sometimes. Softens
the fatalism. I looked out at

cheap solar lights I'd placed
on the perennially flowered
slope, a private bee resort
in summer. Bees, I thought,
if only bees would show up.

I went back inside to shelter
in place, a phrase of our moment.
I held a good thought (useless,
I know) for people forced
to shelter out of place.


hans ostrom 2020