A Blues Collage

brown earth, muddy river
slashing sun, hard hands
long train, long train, long train

hard laughter, heavy fatigue
broken tools, bad food
long train, long train, long train

sweet tea, hot coffee
cold beer, good jukebox
cool rain, cool rain, cool rain


hans ostrom 2017

Dialectic

Mother, gather. Father,
proffer. Mother, other.
Father, farther. Mother,
smoother. Father, rather.

Mother, feather. Father,
weather. Mother, mystery.
Father, factory. Mother,

whisper woe, oh
no. Father falter slow.
Father go, gone.
Ma, Pa, dead,

dust, as they
must, as we
must, just so
very soon. And

the moon here
from the first,
once of Earth,
round and round.


hans ostrom

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

The Collector

The Collector

If you’re his wife, you’ve quit

asking why it all piles up out there

in the yard for everyone to see

from the highway.  Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.

Beer signs in neon cursive.  Coke machines,

cars, cars, cars.  You keep the house

and the backyard according to your principles.

You hate the mechanism in men

that drives them to love machinery.

If you’re his dog, you

urinate on tires encircling weeds.

You sniff varieties of rust,

chase squirrels until they disappear,

until you ram your hot wet nose

into angle iron; it all

makes the yard difficult.

Now, supposing you’re the younger son,

you don’t hate him yet.

Your friends think he’s a wealthy man,

a pirate maybe; they beg

their parents to let them come over,

Crawl through doorless cars, turn

cranks, patent imaginary uses

for useless contraptions.  You know

what it’s all for.  It’s there

to look at, to touch; it’s part

of a big landscape that whirls by

every day outside of School.

You’re the collector.  You can’t

help yourself. You’ll fix one thing

and trade it away for three things

you can’t fix.  The dog pisses on it all,

knocks over cans going after squirrels,

laps up rust-water.  You can’t

keep The neighbor-kids away. 

The younger boy, he follows you around

all day asking What’s this for?  What’s

this for?  You can’t understand why

your wife can’t understand why iron

and motors and axles are necessary,                                       

why strewn is the best way to keep

it all in order.

You stare right back at people

who drive by and scowl at your yard.

You know they’re driving junk.

Their houses are filled with junk that works.

You’ll get hold of it soon enough.

Hans Ostrom, from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

Balzac's Ghost and the Crucial Detail

She brought the wrong clothes to Paris,

which wasn’t as warm as imagination.

She borrowed a sweater and a coat

from me; also shoes, and the heavy socks

that made them fit.  My sweater, especially,

seemed to enjoy having her wear it

in cafes, brasseries, and markets. I

explained all this to Balzac’s ghost

at the writer’s home on Rue Raynouard.

Even though I wasn’t speaking French,

Balzac understood immediately. I went

on to observe that almost everyone

almost everywhere works hard and life

slips by so quickly and then all of a sudden

you’re a ghost listening to a tourist.

Yes, yes, said Balzac’s ghost, but

tell me, what color is the sweater she

borrowed from you? Green, I said.

That, he said, is today’s crucial detail.

Hans Ostrom

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

Puget Sound, Winter

Attend the winter light along the Sound.

Recall the rivers and the runs of fish?

The Earth agrees to fail; the year’s come down.

Most days the sun, per se, cannot be found

Except in willow leaves, low clouds, and mist

Attending Winter light along the Sound.

Maybe the salmon will again astound

Us with erotic, suicidal quests

Though Earth agrees to fail and years come down.

The young that work drink hard in this hard town.

Nation slaughters nation, no peace can last,

And Earth agrees to fail as years come down.

Shall we allow all fish to run aground

And Earth to die several unnatural deaths?

Attend the Winter light along the Sound.

The Earth agrees to fail. The year’s come down.

--Hans Ostrom/2015

White Curse

"As for now, it must be said that the elevation of the belief in being white
was not achieved through wine tastings and ice-cream socials but rather through
the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land." --Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Between the World
and Me," The Atlantic, July 4, 2015



Of course a given white person
can be right in the head
about America's white-supremacist
essence, which is fed by rivers from Hell.

Collectively though we white folks
always have an alibi, an out,
a turning away or an overlooking.
And until we lose all the excuses

and make things right for
good, America will stay
hexed by whiteness. And what looks
more like the spawn of a

curse than one of our worst--
this depraved President of the U.S.?


hans ostrom 2017

Detective in Uppsala

Somebody hired me to find out
what happens to light in Sweden.
Uppsala, specifically.  Hey, my
far-far was Swedish, I wanted to say
as I started the job. There was no
fooling the Swedes.  Every move I
made was American.  Even when I
was quiet, I was loud; and on time,
late. What I found out.

was light fills snow in Uppsala along about
January.  It will have you dreaming
in Bergman scenes.  In summer, it
leaves town for the lakes. It takes
the place of paint: some buildings
are an uncanny yellow, others eye-blue,
others as pale as the belly of a fish
in the Fyris River. I saw light

playing on birch bark, in gold hair,
black hair, brown hair. I have
a recording of light congratulating
raindrops.  The light in this
one apartment almost had me
sobbing, it was so beautiful.
(Private Eyes aren't supposed to cry.)
I praised light in crystal. I
tasted it in pastry.  That's
what I found out. That's my report.


* far far = grandfather
hans ostrom 2017

University Beneath a Flight Plan

One of us speaks of photosynthesis, another
of White Supremacist terror in the U.S.,
another of Hamlet, Act III. Some students
listen.  Others talk.  Others dream.

Airplanes overhead interrupt with
sustained blasts of noise.  Bombers.
Transports. Fighters.  The sound of
jet engines is not a discussion.

Obedient brick buildings shudder.
Our words dissolve.  We keep trying
to teach and learn for a few seconds
and then give up.  Wait.

The pilots note the campus, a point
of reference.  They yawn. The
navigators are bored.  And
the bombardiers pretend.



hans ostrom 1984/2017

Twisted Words

You're twisting my words. Thank you--
it feels good. You spirally wrought
ragamuffin into finfumagar: well done.
It had contortion coming.

And look what you did to
chirioscuro.  It is unrecognizable.
Obviously, you are not new
to wrenching words.

If you don't mind, I'd
like to keep mademoiselle
as is, for as is it's perfect:
a sound sculpture.


hans ostrom 2017

Expedition

Scrupulously planned
and with international sanction,
an expedition discovers itself
dying on ice.

The group walks now
only to look for places
where it can walk. Each
adventurer's blood flows
down through unfeeling toes
toward an alleged sea.

In unrelenting wind and white-out
roaring from imaginary North,
air and ice become one. So do
sky and landscape, person
and expedition.

Speech becomes something
dreamed remotely--like fingers
or the word, survival. All
vocabulary accumulates
into a glacial prayer too
immense to bring out of the heart.



hans ostrom 2017

The Old Highway in Context

Well, I'll tell you, before the freeway
was there, there was the Old Highway.
Before that the old path was there, when
they used wagons. Before that,

Muhammad received Allah's words
and said, yes he said, and before
that, Adam and Eve were still around,
and before that, an asteroid

with water on it hit the Earth,
and before that the Earth and Moon
were the same ball.  Hell, I must've
drive that Old Highway a million times.


hans ostrom 2017

April: Suspect the River

It's not all poppies and blossoms. Death
knows the way to April, too. Colts die.
Arctic becomes wanton one last time.
A spouse leaves a spouse forever,
children go to war, and war goes to children.

No one will guarantee you won't die
in this naive month that smiles
between melancholy March and ruddy
May. Yes, you may do something insane,
such as long for bitter, brief, honest

December days. Or find birds bothersome,
hysterical. Sunlight isn't always easy.
The bright duty of flowers may wear on you.
I advise caution. Look at hills carefully.
Order more seeds than necessary, cash

on delivery.  And suspect the rising river.


hans ostrom 1987/2017