Open Your Soul to the Stars

 this one is a song lyric & my friend R.I. is working on the music--I hope!

Verses
In the space between the beats
of music, time, and heart,
lives a mystifying silence –
source of life, muse of art.

In the space between the stars
float expansive lakes of time.
In the dreams encasing dreams
stairways rise in mists of mind.

Chorus

Open your soul to the stars
dancing with creation.
Floating in that space,
ride on elation.

Open your soul to the stars—
imagination.
Sense the source of love
And adoration.

Verses

In your time within all time
and the life that moments make,
you will find your destiny
in leaps of faith you take.

In emptiness there is a cup
That holds infinity.
Time and beats and rhythm
pour from divinity.

repeat Chorus

Bridge:

Our time’s a space to explore.
Love from the universe is ours.
Find what your time here’s for.
Open your soul
Yeah, open your soul
to the stars.

repeat Chorus

hans ostrom

copyright 2024

Early Morning Light

He woke up after 2:00 a.m.

in a rented room & looked
out a window & saw one bright
star in a dark sky. It hung

just above isolated
city lights. He guessed
the glinting diamond-like
shining came from Venus.

It took more time than he
thought for him to break
his gaze. Looking at the light
made him feel better. Why
not keep looking, then?--
that was the logic,

which seemed in his life
to prevail in these times
of murky, poisoned skies
hanging low over human
politics, human time.

hans ostrom 2023

Overnight at Haypress Creek

We hiked into the deep ravine

of a quick, cold creek, High Sierra.
Found a place to camp and caught
a couple trout to eat. Evening:

lit a small fire to cook the fish
and heat some beans. Ate, then
doused the fire and slipped
into sleeping bags. Night:

wilderness became immense,
swallowed any sense of self-importance.
A world of creatures came alive,
bears and bobcats and bats,
deer, raccoon, rodents, and night-bugs.

Stirring in the brush, snapped sticks,
owl-hoots and the haunting yips
of coyotes coming through the canyon.
Walls of tall conifers turned black,
their furred edges outlined against
a star-choked sky, where meteors
scratched glow-trails close and far away.

Fatigue smothered awe. We slept....
Woke to a rotated sky and a risen moon
bearing down on us like one mad headlight
from a nightmare. Cricket choruses,
unceasing. Freshest air filling lungs.
And the creek: talking, talking, telling
tales of time we could never comprehend.

hans ostrom 2022

Bartok and Stars

"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."  --Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis


In spite of my playing, the piano
produced a simple minuet by Bartok,
which made me think of walking
cautiously across a frozen pond.

An empty coffee cup was sitting
on the bookshelf.  Cool ceramic.
Out there, and "up," night,
are stars, which we think of

as a permanent installation,
not a chaotic map of explosions
or freckles on an infinite face.
I dream recurrently about new

stars, close and bright,
flowing past in a sky-parade
as I look up from a meadow
in mountains and watch,

thrilled and terrified. I almost
forget to breathe. Someone I can't see
says, "Words are stars. I've
told you that before."


hans ostrom 2017

I Have Seen

I have seen the sun
and I fear the calamities.
I have seen the sun
and I seek no remedies.

I have seen the moon
and I've kissed the cool air.
I have seen the moon
in its jeweled lair.

I have seen the stars,
mostly in books, alas.
I have seen the stars:
the avant-garde of mass.


hans ostrom 2013

Skin's Stars

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Skin's Stars

Freckles and moles and other colorations
constellate skin’s sky. Imagine connective
lines, then conjure epidermal legends:
huntress of the thigh, magic beetles near
the feet, miraculous bird on the back of
a hand. Or not. Go with the logistical reading,
points on a dermatological map suggesting
deeper strata of DNA, a digital code of
ancient migratory patterns--ah, but also
of collusions with sunlight. Glory be to God

wrote Hopkins (G.), for dappled things,
and skin certainly qualifies: dot-commissioned
by blots and bits of pigment, uncoalesced
pointillist portrait painted on your body’s
parchment, a realistic abstract rendering.
Scars appear like halted asteroids on this
sky, or they try to get a message through
using ghostly notation—something about
the time you fell down on creek-slate or
tried to break up a dogfight with one hand.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom