Threshold

Maybe there will be rabbits
in my dreams tonight. Not bunnies--
jackrabbits, wild hares. Maybe
I'll see a vast brown plain filled
with gray smokestacks
overseen by stained skies.

Or maybe centipedes
by the thousands will pour
out of the mouth of the President
of the United States. He'll
speak in centipedes, which
will invade the ears of his
audience. And still a lot
of people won't be horrified.
In fact will be ecstatic.


hans ostrom 2019

In Starlight Today

Sunlight is starlight, and our sun
is part of a constellation as constructed
by entities in galactic elsewheres.

The starlight was out and all around
today. I walked in it. It was
very bright. I felt good,

strolling and standing there
near a star. It seemed like an
impossible sort of thing to occur.


hans ostrom 2019

Yelling at the Opera

I think I know exactly
what happened to you.
Over many a conforming
year, you learned not to make
too much of your feelings.
CUT TO: an invitation to
the opera, where every syllable
was bellowed or shrieked,
the singers stuffed with
emotion like gowned
sausages. You felt

buffeted by melodrama,
and you thirsted for a wry
Delta blues song, oblique
and rude. Also brief. To be
trapped at the opera is no
hardship, so you would not
complain. Still it made you
want to yell. So you did,
alarming those assembled
around the intermission bar.
Someone sent for the car.


hans ostrom 2019

Chalmers

          (Chalmers Gage, 1918-2018)

He was a dairy farmer
in Elk Grove, California.
The Valley. The fingers
of his hands were as thick
as saplings, and when he
took a dip of Copenhagen
tobacco, he loaded a third
of a can between lip
and lower teeth. He never

raised his voice. Gave
the impression the world
at large permanently
perplexed him, as if he
were asking himself,
Why do people make
everything so hard when
work is hard enough?"

Of his wife, he sometimes
said, "I don't think I'll ever
figure that gal out." Not
complaining. Just saying.

In his sixties he sold the farm
and lived another 35 years.
Died at a hundred, quiet like,
the one last job to finish.


hans ostrom 2019

Cat's Eyes Haiku

pupils of a cat's
eyes: flat black stones
under pale green waters


hans ostrom 2019

Time and Me

Time lies in bed beside me.
I put my arm around her. Time
takes walks with me. He is

an old man shuffling. Time
goes to the magic shows
in my mind, where illusions
of vast futures make

the audience feel immortal.
Time advises me. It is a
rationalist. It is a poet.
Time occurs in space,

which takes its time,
all time, with it.

Time is a goat
that will eat anything
and be sacrificed.


hans ostrom 2019

At the End of an Old Year in Pacifica

    (New Year's Eve, 2018, Pacifica)

As the people
in the loud house
toast something
or other, a dog
stands among them,
eager to find
actionable meaning
in a human sound
or gesture. The
people know what
many words and gestures
mean, and this creates
a burden the dog
will never know.
All gathered are
mammals on the edge of
a coast. In its way
that is something to toast.


hans ostrom 2019

Oblique

Pavement is silence.
Rain is noise. Air's
a mystery filled
with solutions.
Trees, an anguish;
factories, a
disappointment. I
have heard the music
that results from
your playing. It is
less interesting than
you are, but I don't
blame it.


hans ostrom 2019

Unhappy Meal

The soup is thin
and dejected. I console
it while ladling.
The bread is dry, as
rigid as a hateful pastor.
I introduce the bread
to the soup and it
softens. The wine's eyes
are bright with tears.
It misses vineyard
sunshine. I sip it gently.

This is sustenance. I am
grateful for it but
cannot deny it
is a meal in mourning.
Therefore I finish
and leap up, kind of.
I flee in search of
rich desserts or a
witty woman in a red
dress or both.


hans ostrom 2019

American Product

The nihilionnaire American
president swells like a boil
full of white-supremacist pus.
His central capacity
is rage, which no amount
of hatred and greed
can dilute. He is an American
product, promoted and sold
and deadly.


hans ostrom 2018

Oblique

Pavement is silence
and rain is noise.
Air is a mystery
filled with solutions.
Trees are anguish;
factories, disappointment.
I've heard the music
that results from your playing.
It is less interesting than
you, and who can blame it?



hans ostrom 2018

Unhappy Meal

The soup is thin
and dejected. I console it
while spooning it up.

The bread is dry
and rigid like an
angry pastor.

I introduce it
to the soup,
baptizing it,

and it softens.
The wine's eyes
are bright with tears.

It misses sunshine.
I sip it gently.
This food is sustenance,

I must not complain.
But I cannot deny
that this meal

is in mourning. So
I leap up, kind of.
I flee in search

of a rich dessert
or a witty woman in
a red dress, or both.


hans ostrom 2018

Winter Work

I got used to working most Decembers.
Shoveling snow. Washing pots.
Pounding nails as a carpenter's laborer
between semesters. Once we framed a house,
in sparkling sub-zero weather, High Sierra.
It was oddly exhilarating, though after one shift
I slept so deeply before supper, I
woke up stupefied thinking it was morning.

Then came decades of reading
final essays written by exhausted
college students. Ritual academic
labor, not hard work but grinding still.

This year I'll stumble around
in garden beds, grabbing dead
soggy stalks and seizing final
weeds. Not labor but gesture
of toil, enough to pump cold,
rinsed air into old lungs
and get me feeling sympathetic
to all the people who have
to work shit jobs in the cold
just to get by.


hans ostrom 2018