Talking at Night

Maybe you're high, maybe not.

Either way, you're half of 

a conversation that grows

in the night. A seed of chit-

chat roars into a jungle 

of topics, blather, laughter,

and--for this neighborhood,

anyway--deep questions.

You wonder, at the end of 

night, what these are for,

these night talks. Nothing's

bought or sold, no politics

of the moment, name-dropping,

weather, or work. Nor set stories,

thank god. Just talk--

rare these days, these days

when words get nailed to 

walls, kidnapped, suffocated

by intent ignorance, shot dead. 

Just talk, easy as a summer tide.

hans ostrom 2021

The Talk Artist

She kept talking. I let her talking
be the sound of a creek, an abstraction
made of sound waves.

Then her talking began to sound
like a sea, rising and retreating.
It mesmerized me.

"Does that make any sense?"
she asked. I roused myself
from hearing to answer:

"Yes, and it's beautiful in its
own way," I said, referring
to her talking. That

induced her to talk more.
She was a compulsive talk artist.
She talked as if to breathe.



hans ostrom 2018

Bold Talk

Bold Talk



Bold talk is the best kind. It
may be why talk came to mind.
Once fitted with it, talk I mean,
we could just sit and make stuff
up, say dark is sun, sky is heaven,
lie like the skin of a chameleon--
a way to feel safer, blend in when
we seemed to ourselves to be
different from all other creatures.

Bold talk remains one of the main
features of fear, confusion, despair.
There is no end to these, and no end
to talking boldly, which represents
much but not boldness. Incrementally
grows the force of talk in all its
forms, the Earth now wrapped in
electrons saturated with our telling
and our selling: endless
effluvium of conversation.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom