Thursday, January 20, 2011

Know/Don't Know

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Know/Don't Know


I know
pretty much what you know
but I
also don't know anything like
you know
about the specific secret flow
of your
life--the essential realities of what you
and only
you can know. So here we are, same frame
of references
but different essences.
How do
you do?  You may say how
you do
but also cannot come close to
saying how
and what you do, how precisely it is to
be you,
to me. Still we must proceed with introductions.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Yoga Poem #7

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Yoga Poem #7


Among the willows
beside
the creek I am a
boulder.

Yoga Creek flows.
Willows,
full of its water,
flex.

They bow, stretch.
Hey,
the boulder participates
in

its own way. Its
molecules
expand, contract.
(Sigh).

The boulder's mat
envies
the willows' mats,
but

the boulder is
fine
with being a rock among
willows.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

"Old Shoes"/Trudy Pitts Trio

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

"Music When Soft Voices Die," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Just Ray

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We'd Say That's Just Ray


He built up a furniture-store in Sacramento,
made enough to have a summer Sierra home.
This was back when families owned such stores,
before meta-corporations rolled over them
with container-shipments, volume, capital, etc.

Ray's employees embezzled. The business
collapsed.  A proud man defeated. Nobody
doesn't lose. We're told differently ("you can
be whatever you want") because it's good for
business. Yep, Ray was his name. A good man

as far as we could tell, our ages ranging from 6 to
15.  We had to furnish a tree fort, and one of us,
not me, put a garter snake down Ray's daughter's
shirt one summer when she was climbing up.
Laurel was her name. Tough. She told her
mother to shut up. This was before the thieves
wrecked Ray.  If he were alive today,

he'd say something sober and true about success.
We'd probably humor him and say, after he'd left,
"Oh, that's just Ray."

Copyright 2011 Ostrom