"The Maldive Shark," by Herman Melville

As the Indian Ocean has been in the news, with the Malaysian Airline plane missing, I thought of Melville's poem, the Maldives being situated in the Indian Ocean.

CIA Spies on U.S. Congress

I'm not sure why people are so upset about the CIA's allegedly spying on Congressional staffers. Citizens in general get spied on all the time, sans warrants. And the fact that the concentration camp at Guantanamo is still open is incalculably more egregious.

Besides, at least the CIA is spying on the enemy: Congress.

"The Road to Avrillé," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

)

"Something Left Undone," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Bitter Thoughts on Receiving a Slice of Cordelia's Wedding Cake," by Robert Graves

"Island Fever"

"Mistakes"

"A White Blossom," by D.H. Lawrence

"Lucid Mansion"

Grace creates a spaciousness,

a spacious nest like a meadow

between cedar groves, or a placid

piazza—a place, that is, 

for consciousness to consider

its conscious nest, 

its fortunate fest of being. In

the howling storm of time,

grace manages to accrue

some space, in dark 

vacuity manages to

maintain a lucid mansion.

hans ostrom 1984/2014

"Winter Moon," by Langston Hughes

Men at 60

Men at 60 have certain
urges. Check that. They
imagine they have certain
urges. Men at 60 are
uncertain. They rarely
speak or act as if
they are uncertain.

Men at 60 wonder if
they'll die right now
walking in sunlight or just
later sleeping or at
63.27, 80, 71, 69.45,
or . . . . Men at 60

unlike men at 40 or 50
aren't appealing, even
to themselves. Dear
Narcissus: Go fuck yourself.

Men at 60 have done it all
and done nothing and done
some things that have
amounted to nothing. They're
bored by photos of koala
bears and panda bears and
most every other
goddamned thing.

At 60 men eat the same things
over and over. Secretly
they hate their own opinions
most of all. If they don't,
they should. Men at 60

like to hear singing but
do not like to plan to or
to pay to listen to it.
Men at 60 have bizarre
ugly regions on their
bodies, too many to count.



hans ostrom 2014

"The Witnesses," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Reconnaissance Pilot

The higher power and impersonality of satellites

and drones have nearly made him obsolete; still,

eccentrically aloft, he guides his delicate aircraft

on airstreams that flutter an enemy flag

several miles below, and he banks like the gesture

that leads a ballerina's turn, but he desires no audience.

What intricate obsession has jeweled this cockpit

with a dazzling, Latinate instrumentation?

In this black, airless sky of ice crystals,

his heat-sensitive cameras caress

an agriculture of warfare below: missile silos,

grids of weaponry, infantry and air corps

stored in barracks like dormant bees.

If he prays, probably it is a tactical prayer:

not to become a blotch of light smeared into a streak

by a radar's radial sweep. For when his wings

brush enemy airspace, he becomes a heresy against Treaty,

a target fit for the righteous, howling fighter-planes

curving up in silver clusters out of dark under-space.

In Indianapolis his wife once awoke terrified

from a dream in which ground-artillery

had blasted his airplane into a shower

of alloy and plexiglass; but in his own dream,

ejecting in time, he hangs by slender cords

beneath a dome of silk like a spider traveling on the breeze.

For those precious moments, he is borne in a world

without radio or loyalties or mission. And then he tumbles

on frozen turf or is it an orchard or a cornfield?--

slowly rises to un-clip the cords,

to assume his villain's stance like a scarecrow--

soldiers with faces

all alike flocking toward him, radios squawking

a foreign static, an orange dawn entering enemy East.

Captured, he knows he should be afraid or courageous,

but instead he simply longs for the farmland

surrounding Bloomington, Indiana.

copyright Hans Ostrom 1979/2014