The Trouble With Nouns

The first book my former teacher, Karl Shapiro, published was called Person, Place, and Thing--the old-fashioned definition of a noun. (He may have self-published a book before this one appeared.) I still think it's a heck of a title for a book of poems. It suggested that Shapiro was writing more or less in the vein of William Carlos Williams and other Imagists ("no ideas but in things," as Williams writes in Paterson), although Shapiro's poems tend to be robust, full figured, not spare and spidery like those of H.D. (for example) or Amy Lowell. To some degree, the poetry of Shapiro is where the poetry of Williams and Auden meet--an American view of things (sometimes literally things) combined with a British sense of language, irony, and poetic form.

Aside from "show, don't tell," the other most ubiguitous piece of advice people like to hurl at new writers is "use active verbs." (Forms of the verb "to be" are not considered active.) Verbs, verbs, and more verbs--that's the advice. One must look with suspicion of not disdain on adjectives and adverbs. One must be unimpressed even with nouns, allegedly. Occasionally, such advice (however well meant and possibly even useful) brings out the contrarian in me. Hence the following poem:

The Trouble With Nouns

*

*

"The trouble with nouns," the man said,

"is that they just sit there, doing nothing."

I didn't know why he viewed this situation

as problematic. I like entering a cafe (for

instance) full of nouns that are just sitting there.

I don't want them to get up and accost me. I

like it when nouns keep to themselves, don't

open fire, don't start arguments or act out

an impulse to create conflict, as if

the Nounville Cafe were the scene of a one-act

play or the setting of a short story. I sit amongst

nouns with a kind of noun-like lassitude.

Someone enters the establishment, stares.

We stare back, we nouns. The look on

the newcomer's face suggests the nouns

and I appear to be menacing, although or

because we just sit there in our nounish diffidence.

Some people think nouns are trouble.

*

*

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Options

Options

Please enter your 200-digit identity-code.
If you'd like persons paid by citizens' taxes
to continue to incarcerate and torture people
in the absence of habeas corpus, touch CONTINUE.
If not, touch STOP. If you've lost faith and hope
and have neglected charity, touch FORGIVE.

If you've kept faith, have hope, and do help,
touch WEARY. If you feel weird positioned
in front of a screen that "tells" you what to do,
and you do it, find the plug connected to
the machine that energizes the screen. Figure
out the rest. (Warning: criminal charges may obtain.)
Otherwise, touch CONTINUE.

If you'd like to give yourself an inebriation-test,
touch YOUR NOSE. If this information is correct,
touch SO WHAT? If this information is incorrect,
touch OH, WELL. If you dream of dominating
the world, touch DELUDED. If you are the screen,
and you feel like touching yourself, that's
your business, but screen yourself.

Would you like to make another transaction?
If it's the kind of transaction that can't
be mediated by a screen, well, that's
kind of refreshing, isn't it? Touch TOUCH.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Wet Blanket

All right, I apologize in advance for having written a post-election, wet-blanket poem.

But I know about and contribute modestly to this place called Nativity House in Tacoma. It's basically a place for homeless and otherwise impoverished, jobless people to go during the day--to get something warm to drink and something to eat, and to find something to do--like talk, play checkers, get a bus-pass, maybe get directed to a clinic or a job or whatever. Anyway, the place is always pretty busy, but in the last few months, the clientele has doubled: just one small measure in one medium-sized city of how the mischief of Bush II, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Wachovia, AIG, Exxon, et alia, "trickles" down, in the parlance of Reaganomics.



Now, About the Poor

After the spectacle, what about the poor?
After all that money spent per vote,
what about the poor? Hey,

I saw Cable News Network
create a hologram of a news-
correspondent, which talked
about how her hologram had been
made. Her hologram and how
it was made was news delivered
by the hologram. For Chrissakes,
this is insane. It's stupidity cubed.

I'd rather they'd interviewed
a real poor person for an hour,
with no commercial break--
someone working on the edge
of exhaustion and financial
collapse every day--that
would have been a bigger
surprise than a hologram,
especially if they'd helped
the person find a better job--
real news.

The poor have been trickled
on for a long time. Trickled
is a blend of tricked and tickled,
duplicity and petty cruelty.

Hey, what was that sound?
A kind of rumble, a sort of roar?
After the spectacle,
what about the poor?

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

To Where Do Conservatives Think of Exiling Themselves?

When Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were elected, I often heard leftward-leaning folks threaten to leave the U.S. Usually this threat was expressed right before the election. "If Reagan gets reelected, I'm moving to Canada"--for example. I don't actually know anyone who ever exiled themselves thusly. I do know one fellow who has insured that he and his family now have dual citizenship in the U.S. and a European nation, just in case self-exile becomes an option.



Someone in class today raised the question of where rightward-leaning folk threaten to move to when elections disappoint them greatly. I owe this person a debt of gratitude because I had never thought about this question before.



As the person and others noted, Canada is probably out because many conservatives like to point to it and its healthcare system as embodying a cautionary tale. Is Dubai a possibility? I have no idea.


I've heard one can stash money in some place called the Cayman Islands, which I think are in the Caribbean, but I don't know if these islands are especially welcoming to conservative Americans.


I presume almost every nation in Europe would be unacceptable. Sweden has a shockingly effective combination of capitalism and socialism. The Swedes have universal healthcare, free college education, generous parental leave, and so on, but they also produce steel and cars, and they have a trade-surplus. They also talk very deliberately, and they listen during conversations, so Sweden is really not a comfortable place for most Americans, who like to talk first and listen later.



I think Swedes make their own jet-fighters, too, so they don't buy a lot of military equipment from us, and ever since the 18th century, they have become positively allergic to going to war--but we must remember that they did quite a lot of raiding for about 200 years way back when, circa 700-900 A.D.E. Maybe they got war out of their system, so to speak. Who knows? And there are only 8 million Swedes total, so with regard to possible invasions, the options are limited. They fought Norway a long time ago, and all the issues were settled. They don't like how Danes speak, but otherwise, I think they're okay with Denmark. They get along fine with Finns. They seem to pretend Russia doesn't exist, except for that terrible Chernobyl thing. They focus like a laser-beam on what to do during the summer. Is that a liberal or a conservative trait?



Conservatives seem to loathe France. Dennis Miller said that "France is dead to me" when the French leader balked at supporting the invasion of Iraq, for example. The French seem to have been unaffected by this announcement. How odd. One would think Dennis Miller's sentiments would hit France like an earthquake. :-)


Alaska is a possibility, I should think, because, well, look who's governor there--and you don't actually have to leave the nation. You just have to take a long flight, and in you're in a state governed by a person who galvanized the Republican base.



Numerous poetic possibilities exist, including "Sailing to Byzantium," in which Yeats dreams of "living" in a kind of permanent world of well wrought art, and Dickinson's poem about dwelling in possibility. Possibility is a very good town indeed.



Probably so-called conservatives and liberals have much in common, including the fact that neither actually exile themselves after a disappointing election, or at least very few of them do so. Also, for a long time, many people have argued that the Democratic and Republican parties are more similar than they pretend to be.



The Republicans may have to work on redefining themselves, however, at least for the purposes of the political spectacle. For a long time, they were very effective at demonizing "liberals" and thereby defining themselves by defining the "Other." They also once at least pretended to stand for fiscal restraint, but Reagan and Bush II pretty much ruined that with massive deficit spending. Ironically, Clinton seemed more economically prudent than they. Also, the Republicans wedded themselves to a particular strain of American Christianity--a mixture of wealth, interest in politics, and fundamentalism, best embodied, arguably, by Pat Robertson, who rails against a women's right to choose abortion, against homosexuality, against liberals, and against feminism, but who has accumulated a great deal of financial wealth (no camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle stuff for him) and even ran for president once.




I wonder if they could go back to their not-so-distant roots and become Eisenhower Republicans. Eisenhower golfed a lot a balanced the budget, didn't he? Also, he didn't like Nixon. I think Eisenhower would find people like Rove, Gingrich, the writers at The Nation, the people on Fox News, et al., as just too petty and mean--and wound up a bit too tightly. I think that after you've directed a war against Hitler, you get some perspective.


The Democrats, of course, will have to learn how to handle success. They tend not to handle it well. (Nor do the Republicans.) If the Democrats were crafty, they would pursue some items on the Libertarian agenda, especially those connected with restoring civil liberties.

I really like discussing politics and occasionally blogging about politics because I know almost nothing about the subject, so I'm unencumbered by knowledge and experience. I especially like talking politics in the presence of one friend, in particular, who possesses a wealth of theoretical, social-scientific, and practical knowledge of politics. I suspect he simply hums songs in his head while I'm talking, and when I stop opining, he says something like, "That's interesting."



I'm not quite through gas-bagging, unfortunately, although undoubtedly you've stopped reading by now. So I'll just add that it is a well known fact that the Democratic Congress did the Democratic President Carter no favors, and I do wonder if the same will happen with Obama. I also wonder if right-wing radio will lower the temperature of their remarks; it's a genre that seems almost addicted to borderline hate-speech. I'd rather listen to a conservative countepart of the more-or-less liberal Thom Hartman, who engages in calm debates with conservatives. It's conversation-radio.



And who shall run for president in four years? Palin? Gingrich? Romney? I do hope Ron Paul runs again. I liked hearing him bring up going back to the gold standard. No one ever seemed to want to engage him on the issue. Go figure.

November 8, 2008

Politics is a cynical, spectacle-driven, money-saturated, grinding business, but sometimes its results transcend its nature.

I think of the resilience of African Americans over 389 years, all the degradation suffered, now at least symbolically overcome.

I think of the strange turns of fate--that Obama's father is African, not African American; that if Gore or Kerry were to have won, Obama may not be the president-elect; that so many women I know gracefully shifted support from Clinton to Obama.

I think of writers whom I never knew (although I got to shake Baldwin's hand and speak with him) but whose words have always drawn me to their spirit and views: Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Jessie Redmon Fauset, James Baldwin, so many more.

I think of certain colleagues, friends, current and former students.

I think, finally, of my friend from high school, with whom I still keep in touch--Ronn English.

I think of President Obama. Keep him safe.

New Diggers

I almost feel as if a Kantian categorical imperative obliges me to say something about tomorrow's election, which is obviously crucial in many ways but also surrounded by hyperbole. It certainly is a distinctive new moment in American and African American history, but the meaning of the moment is of course yet to unfold, let alone be interpreted.





I've been teaching at the same college for over two decades, and the students are obviously more tuned into, informed about, engaged with, and anxious concerning this election--by far--than any election previously. Many of them, of course, are voting in a presidential election for the first time, and they certainly are voting in interesting times.





The disinterested political scientist whom I trust the most predicts that Obama/Biden will "win" 310 electoral votes.





I don't think this poem has much if anything to do with the election, and that is just as well.





New Diggers
*
*
In the near future, people will mine dumps
and landfills for sustenance if not profit. That
stuff we've been tossing out for centuries
gets more valuable every day. Burrowers
will try to borrow it back from the past
we thought we were throwing it into.
Places of refuse live in the future like
bank-vaults. Toward the end of this
profligate era, we'll want to accept much
of what we refused in the way of pulp,
plastic, and metal. Every civilization
needs its diggers. Our civilization
has dumped and buried useful stuff
maniacally and so will soon employ
exhumers to resurrect what once was
waste from out of tombs.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom


Of course, in almost every nation, in different degrees, people already pick through "garbage" to find valuable or edible things, and a "dust-heap" is central to Dickens' immense, marvelous novel, Our Mutual Friend, which in some ways prefigures our ultra-profligate era. But I have to imagine that some landfills in the U.S. and elsewhere will begin to look like wealth-laden mines at some point, although I'm most willing to be corrected on this most wild guess.

Wary

Wary Lyric

I live in wariness,

which is no place.

It is an atmosphere,

a mental space.

*

Courtesy suggests I

ought to give an image

to sharpen what I mean.

A coyote on a ridge:

*

It watches, listens, sniffs.

Only hunger makes it vicious.

Otherwise, it lives by wariness,

is naturally suspicious

*

and alone, even in company.

Me, too, to some degree.

I live in wariness, a type

of fear. That's me.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Platinum Card

One with whom I live reported that I received an offer in the mail for an American Express Platinum Card.

Before the economy got as messed up as an election in Florida, I (and every other American adult, I assume) received an offer for a new credit card every day. There's probably a correlative if not a causal relationship there somewhere.

At any rate (so to speak), I don't like get into the details of such offers, even in the rare instances when I pursue them. I just assume I'm going to be had, so to speak. So I asked whether the one with whom I live knew any of the details.

"Well," she said, "it's a sign that your credit-rating is good. I might add that the annual fee is about 500 dollars. They also claim you never have to wait in line--you know, like, at car-rental places."

Of course, she was not persuaded by the "argument" American Express had advanced, nor was I. My own objections included the following:

1. If I signed up, they'd send me a plastic card, when in fact they had offered me a platinum card. I wouldn't mind owning a rectangle of platinum. I don't think I'd carry it in my wallet, but I'd still like to own it. Besides, if you say you're sending a platinum card, then send a platinum card.

2. In most places where I stand in line, no none will know I have a platinum card until I've stood in line already, and I'm not about to raise my voice at the grocery store and proclaim, "Hey, I have a platinum card!" --Especially when the card is plastic, not platinum. So by the time I get up to the cashier and show her or him my platinum card (which I wouldn't use to buy groceries anyway), the cashier would simply say, "How tragic, my good fellow. You had a platinum card, and yet you still had to stand in line. I think the Greeks wrote about such ironies."

3. Five hundred dollars is a lot to pay somebody for the privilege of making them money. I assume American Express would make money in several different ways were I to accept the platinum card and use it.

4. I think this card might have one of those mystical APR's, which I think are partly responsible for the economic problems out there. APR stands for adjustable percentage-rate, I think. I'm not sure it qualifies as a euphemism, but it doesn't quite convey the peril involved. I believe "Apocalypse Probably Results" might be a better statement--hyperbolic, certainly, but at least people would be more cautious with their funds and less vulnerable to predatory lenders, not that American Express is predatory. I think they're more like grazing lenders, steadily munching on people's money.

5. This item may seem unrelated, probably because it is, but I think American Express needs to publish an anthology of great poetry and send it for free to all card-members, even those at the iron, tin, and aluminum levels, not just the gold and platinum levels. How hard would it be for them to do this? Not hard at all. I think Starbucks, GM, IBM, et al., should do the same thing. I would be willing to accept slight alterations, such as anthologies of great essays, short stories, or cartoons. Society would benefit immediately from such a capitalistic re-distribution of ideas and language. The power of poetry is highly undervalued. In fact, Poetry isn't even listed on the New York Stock Exchange! What a glaring oversight! Moreover, poetry comes with 0% financing.

Ballad of Getting Older

Ballad of Getting Older


Time came by to see me.
It was in disguise.
"Your lease is up," Time said,
with phony, heavy sighs.

I am the age I am.
What can I do?
I am not dead yet, no,
but I'm not new.

Of course I'm scared to die,
faith in God aside.
Time came by to see me.
It said something snide.

I'm alive. And next I'll die.
That's pretty much the tale.
Time said my lease is up,
my place in space for sale.

Time and space, death and life:
the basics of our being.
Faith is concentrated on
what's beyond the seeing.

Travel Plans

Travel Plans

*

*

Tokyo and Instanbul

are places I've not been.

They're the same place.

Or so claims Zen.

*

*

History, brochures,

and residents there

will, I'm certain,

beg to differ.

*

*

Given time and money

(I don't ask much!),

I hope to visit both,

compare, contrast, and such.

*

*

'Til then I keep a Tokyo

in one part of my mind,

an Instanbul nearby:

two images that bind.
*

*

Hans Ostrom Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

October 31st

October 31st


The high-school girl had been trick-
or-treating, filling sharp Pacific Northwest
air with operatically lemony perfume.
Now, at our doorstep, she stood, bleeding.

"I was happy," she said, "and skipping when
I fell." We invited her in, explained how
hydrogen peroxide wouldn't sting her
cut hand. Her mother, costumed as

a classic witch, came to our doorstep.
"Did my daughter just come in your house?"
she asked. "Yes," we said. "Please come in."
"No," she said. "One stranger in your house

is enough." The bandaged daughter
joined her mother. "Happy," we called
to them as they walked away on
concrete into shadows, "Halloween."


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Socialism

Candidate Obama has been labeled a "socialist," and "socialism" seems to be especially visible and audible in the media these days, so I thought I'd check with the venerable OED (albeit the online version) for a definition of "socialism":

"1. A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all. Freq. with initial capital. Christian socialism, a doctrine or theory, promulgated about 1850 by F. D. Maurice, C. Kingsley, T. Hughes, and others, advocating a form of socialism on a Christian basis.
1837 Leeds Times 12 Aug. 5/1 Socialism.Messrs. Fleming and Rigby.On Monday evening..these two gentlemen attended [sic] an audience..on the topics of the real nature of man. 1839 J. MATHER (title), Socialism Exposed: or ‘The Book of the New Moral World’ Examined. Ibid. App. 22 To explain and expose what Robert Owen's Socialism is. 1840 Quart. Rev. Dec. 180 The two great demons in morals and politics, Socialism and Chartism. 1850 Daily News 13 Mar. 5/2 The infection of..‘Christian Socialism’ is spreading to Whitehall. 1863 FAWCETT Polit. Econ. II. i. 181 Socialism, as first propounded by Owen and Fourier, proposed that a society living together should share all the wealth produced. 1881 STEVENSON Virg. Puerisque 89, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism.

2. A state of society in which things are held or used in common.
1879 H. GEORGE Progr. & Pov. VI. i. (1881) . . . ."

A mere citizen and poet, I am obviously no expert on politics, political economy, or philosophies of government.

However, my lack of expertise, as usual, does not impede the offering of opinions.

Judging by definition #2 in the OED, the U.S. seems to have decided (to the extent a nation can be said to decide) to operate as a society that combines capitalism, socialism, repbulicanism (small r), democracy (of sorts, small d), and imperialism. By the latter term, I mean simply that the U.S. decided to control a lot of lands and countries outside its boundaries, rather aggressively. I give you the Puerto Rico, Iraq, South Korea, a piece of Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples, not to mention bases in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. We make the Romans look like provincials.

I think the capitalist aspects of U.S. society are self-evident. I think some socialist ones are, too. The latter include national parks, state and interstate, highways, public schools, public universities, the Library of Congress, national monuments, social security, and Medicare. That is to say, in a manner of speaking, citizens or "the government" "own" these things and entities; or rather, these things and entities are a "commons" we share. Theoretically, at least, some of my taxes go to support Yellowstone Park, and I may visit there, enjoy myself, but not act as if I own it in the way I own a third of an acre in some suburban tract. It seems to me one great question with which a society must grapple is what parts of the society should constitute "the commons," as opposed to private or corporate property. I happen to think national parks a are a heck of a good idea, for example.

I happen to think health care should be part of the commons, something of which we all take part and something we all support, each according to our capacities. Everybody needs medical attention at some point, no exceptions. Most adults have something to contribute to a common pool; those that don't have something deserve assistance anyway because they are our fellow citizens. When somebody's that far down on their luck or their health, you don't just help them out, ad hoc, you think ahead and develop a system that's there to help them out. It's called being compassionately practical, or sensible.

Some kind of comprehensive (definition = everyone eligible to be covered) system, not necessarily nationalized but coordinated nationally, stands a very good chance of being more economically efficient and easier to navigate than the incomplete, expensive, inscrutable system we have now.

Further, I'd assert that almost all, if not all, Republicans and Democrats (including McCain and Obama) combine capitalism and socialism in their views, policies, and plans--with very little difference between them (the views, policies, and plans).

Let us now see if I, a mere citizen and poet, can get even more simplistic in my analysis:

I think a remaining piece of the socialism the U.S. is moving toward accepting is, indeed, a "universal" health care system. I think it will not look like the one in Italy or Sweden, but I think the politicians will be forced to pass laws that give almost everyone access to health care up and above visits to emergency rooms. Oddly enough, I think such a system will assist capitalism as practiced by small businesses and large corporations, and this assistance may be the capitalistic impetus required to achieve socialistic ends. Wouldn't a sensible, more-or-less universal health-care system help all businesses and corporations to assess and to control their overhead better and therefore operate more efficiently?

Then, this question: Are the combined armed forces an example of socialism? They are controlled, allegedly, by "the government," and they are funded by tax-dollars. On the other hand, how much say do citizens have in how armed forces are deployed? The last war formally declared by our elected representatives was WWII. Are the armed forces an example of capitalism (the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned)? Are they a form of oligarchic dictatorship? Did "we" decide to invade Iraq, or did Bush and a few others?

However one might define our combined armed forces politically, they present the U.S. with quite a problem. The U.S. spends almost immeasurably more money on its military than almost every other nation; the U.S. is broke; the U.S. probably needs to shrink its armed forces. Will it shrink its armed forces, whether McCain or Obama is elected? No, I think not. I think the system is self-perpetuating.

But back to the original question about socialism: all mainstream politicians blend capitalism and socialism, and many of the programs that fit the definition of socialism (like highways and bridges) keep the politicians in office. Pork is a variety of socialism, that is. Even the most right-wing politicians who rail against "socialism" support projects owned collectively by "the people." Even Bernie Sanders, the independent, socialist politician from Vermont, harbors some capitalistic tendencies. So A) let's not kid ourselves, B) let's stop hurling "socialism" and "socialist" around as if we were calling people werewolves or vampires, C) let's fess up to the fact the our system does combine and will continue to combine capitalism and socialism, and D) let's admit that we don't know how to stop spending so much money to maintain our imperial status.

Incidentally, the famous Helen Keller (pictured) liked socialism and thought of herself as a socialist.

And, deploying another abrupt, non-transitional transition, let me mention that I just finished reading a fascinating nonfiction book: Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Partnership that Defined America. Co-monopolists, Carnegie and Frick basically cornered several related markets: coke (not cocaine but raw material for steel); steel (making and selling); iron-mining; and railroads (which required steel to operate and which hauled the coke and the steel). It was all a magnificent closed loop, one that made them surrealistically wealthy but that brutalized their workforces, and I'm not being melodramatic. If you made steel, your body was basically ruined by age 40, and your family was left broke.

Ultimately, the two men became sworn enemies, owing in part to the strike at the Homestead steel-making factory, the attempted strike-breaking by the hired Pinkertons, and the eventual take-over of the factory by the military, which was not pro-union, to say the least. Monopolism triumphed. Strangely enough, however, Carnegie eventually decided to "redistribute" almost all of his massive wealth. He just kept giving it away. He gave it away ostentatiously, true; that is, he made sure people knew he was giving it away. But he still gave it away. He was a mightily conflicted man. Frick, not so much. He was an unconflicted, uncomplicated, albeit very bright and ruthless capitalist, monopolist, and anti-unionist. Anyway, the book's a great read, regardless of your own economic perspective, whether you are a capitalistic purist, a muddled centrist, an anarchic syndicalist, or just a person who works, sleeps, eats, and then occasionally votes.

I'll end with two final hopelessly simplistic rheotrical questions: Isn't almost any program of taxation, even in a capitalist society such as ours, a form of redistributing wealth, even if the wealth distributed is comparatively trivial? Did any truly wealthy person ever become unwealthy because of taxation?

Light Verse for the Birds

I've been observing starlings for quite some time. Maybe you've seen them; they often lift off from the ground and take off in a great cloud of hundreds, and the cloud then undulates in what seems to be a coordinated way. This take-off and the undulating cloud are especially startling and pleasing at dusk. The phenomena are quite something to watch.

A book on birds I have describes starlings as "garrulous." I think they can be pretty aggressive around other birds, although I doubt crows or eagles take them seriously. A side note: the fictional detective and gourmand Nero Wolfe likes to have his chef, Fritz, prepare a meal of roasted starlings. Yikes. I have not dined on starlings. Nor do I know anyone non-fictional who has done so. Anyway, pictured here is a starling. I've always appreciated the speckling and the deeply yellow beak.

And here, for a bit of a glum Tuesday, is some light verse regarding birds, a poem I hope will lighten your load if you've had a tough day, as the cashier at the local supermarket did in fact have; she told me 4 people had called in sick, and at the late hour of 6:00 p.m., she hadn't yet had a lunch-break. So a special tip of the cap goes out to working folk, especially those who've been on their feet all day.

For the Birds

Here's to starlings
who travel in clouds,
and unsubtle ravens,
who caw in louds.

Here's to robins,
who run-and-then-stop,
and jays climbing trees
hop by hop.

Here's to songbirds,
sharp and small.
Hell, here's to birds--
let's toast them all,

including extinct ones,
an awful loss,
moreso because the cause
was likely us.

But let's not end there.
It's too sad.
Think of your favorite bird.
Be glad.

Hans Ostrom 2008 Hans Ostrom