Lunar Eclipse Seen from the Central Valley

(California: April 1979)

 We sipped tequila from a bottle,

saw a shadow push into the moon,

which took on a planet’s gravitas,

losing its varicose craters, its

coin’s gloss.  Then its yellow

turned brown and red enough

to make a farmer look at it

as arable space. We enjoyed

the eclipse’s math and chance,

tried to focus binoculars

using a rooftop TV antenna

as approximative point.

We tried to shape our minds

around such fear and magic

as hunters/gatherers

may have felt. We failed.

We joked, and after midnight,

we opened doors of our several

abodes in a college-town stucco

hive.  We set clocks,

listened to household engines,

to music from vinyl undulating on a

turn-table like glassy harbor

water. Our dreams orbited desire.

Hans Ostrom 1979/2017

Novel and Poem

(ars poetica)

A novel is a thousand lovely cacti.
A poem is a shot of tequila.
Novel is the breathing of a marathon-runner.
Poem is the intake of breath felt when a woman
invites you to be nude with her.
Novel is a wheat field. Poem
is a vegetable patch.

A novel is a city.
A poem is hearing music or seeing
art or going broke or having sex or
falling in love or hating work or fearing
or being all alone or getting acclaim or
arrested in that city.

Novel is a search for spices.
Poem is cardamom.

A novel is a battle.
A poem is dog-tags hanging
on a war memorial.

Novel is someone you know well.
Poem is an intimate stranger.


hans ostrom 2016

To Eddie Some Weeks After the Winter Solstice

Oceans are the ultimate artists, Edward,
more variously capable and constantly
original than earthquakes, rivers, ice,
and erosion. Of course, human art,

in contrast to all of these, is not
really in the conversation. Human art
is always a bit of a knock-off.
Sculpture, painting, surrealism,
realism, epic tales, Dada, absurdism,
comedy, tragedy, scrambled genres,
modes, and impulses, and forms
we cannot even grasp abound

in oceans, by oceans. The oceanic
opus is constantly changing,
ever-expanding, and utterly
unconcerned about audience,
remuneration, and critical success.

Sad Plato, when he was thought-seeking
for ideal forms, should have recalled
the ideal generator of forms:
the sea! The Greek seas alone
would have cheerfully overwhelmed
Plato's wee dialogues and allegories
and turned them into fantastic
shapes to nourish starved imaginations.

What do you think about that, Eddie
of La Jolla? I know how you like your
Plato and his greatest invention Socrates,
who, like a professional wrestling
star, always won his contests.

As you warm up your pipes to sing
in response to me, Eddie, let me stand you
to a salty tequila cocktail, an
ocean unto itself, some say.

hans ostrom 2016

Said

Said, "Clouds, go over to my friend's
house, but don't drop rain."

Said, "Hawk, sit on a power-line
that stretches all the way to Paradise."

Said, "River, sip some tequila, then
salt-water, when you get there."

Said, "Star, you are what you are,
and far is your situation."


Hans Ostrom, 2012