McCoy Tyner

 (1938-2020)

Once

in Berkeley, smoke like Bay fog lay

over heads of cool-hip-jazz-club-clientele &

waitresses slivered through tables/bodies/chairs,

kept drinks coming, ice and glass and liquid held aloft &

Mr. Tyner

--he hit the mthrfckn keys

so hard one time strings

popped & whipped  like snakes out

‘the belly of the grand dark

piano

& the percussionist had some

mojo stuff hanging from racks—

bones, steel tubes, feathers—

all

humid and scratchy and knock-talk

click-back bicker-bock-a-zone

sounds, & McCoy was rippin and roarin,

working the gift

out

of Keyborderland. And the horns. It was a big

marrow-filling, ear-enlightening night. Outside

after encores:

cool, misty Berkeley. Had a look around

to see which way the karma blew,

got in the ’67 Camaro, drove back up EYE-80

to plain brown-cow Davis, college town,

brain

humming like the lowest pianoforte

E-note pedaled through the measures.

"Winter Solstice," by Kara B. Imle

 A link to a fine poem by Kara B. Imle, "Winter Solstice," in the online journal medium:

https://kbimle.medium.com/winter-solstice-3d415e434d2a

Traveling Cat

 (second version)

He was a traveling cat. He raced

and slunk, padded and trotted, sleek

and balanced, tendons full of

future speed.  He moved soundlessly

but for a hiss or a yowl now

and then, or a crazy crash,

never his fault. Yes,  a

questing cat, moving from this to

that, from at to at, detecting

motion, smooth as lotion, reading

air, decoding sounds from

everywhere. Itinerant and

cool, self-possessed and freely

feline--leonine, nined up with lives,

purring worries, cagey but uncaged,

guileless and wise.  Green eyes.

2020

Bartok and the Stars

 (second version)

"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."- Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis

In spite of my playing, the piano

produced a simple minuet by Bartok, 

which made me think of walking

cautiously across a frozen pond.

An empty coffee cup sat there

on the bookshelf. Cool ceramic.

Out there, and "up":  night.

And stars, which we think of

as a permanent installation, 

not a chaotic map of explosions

or freckles on an infinite face.

I dream recurrently about new

stars, close and bright, 

flowing past in a sky-parade

as I look up from a meadow

in mountains and watch, 

thrilled and terrified. I almost

forget to breathe. Someone I can't see

says, "Words are stars. I've

told you that before. Many times."

Istanbul Evening

 (second version)

A white, four-masted yacht slips between

dingy barges and trawlers, disappears into

a blue haze on the Sea of Marmara. The call

to prayer's an hour away. Swallows dive

and glide, pigeons prowl, the sun's

about to settle down. 

Below the terrace, lush maples and oaks

sigh and sway, leaning west. Sounds of traffic,

children, and work never cease. Near a mosque's

minaret on the hill, a faded Turkish flag

flutters in slow motion. Now a seagull appears.

It glides in a wide arc, which now becomes 

a large invisible circle. The glide traces

ever smaller concentric circles against 

the backdrop of the sea until the gull 

lands precisely at the point of a rooftop

below. The gull stands,

strong and ready, facing a low sun, and

something in the scene says all is well

this evening, even when it may not be,

especially if it may not be. 

Poetry Consulates

 (second version)

Pushkin loved the idea of St. Petersburg
and the bronze horseman who saw
the city before it was built. Langston
Hughes loved the idea of Harlem,
also some people there. Did Baudelaire

love Paris? Splenetically, maybe.
I don't think Dickinson loved
any cities. The village of her mind
sufficed, urban in its way.

It pleases me to think
of all the poets writing now
in Istanbul and Mainz, Hong

Kong and Honolulu, Uppsala
and Houston, Brasilia and Berlin,
Tehran and Tangier and all
the other cities where poets
live--every city in other words,
in their words, which
follow their cities around,
no matter how often the
cities change disguises
or suffer horrors. Poets'

words attach themselves to love
and food, despair and dreams,
rage and work and filth and beauty.
If only these poets could meet
and read their poems and argue
but not fight, ask questions
about language and children,
mountains and rivers and trains.
Should we, then, build poetry consulates
in all these poem-filled cities?
Yes, yes we should.

© right now    poetry • cities   

10 Tips for Successful Holiday Entertaining

 (re-posting one from long ago)

1. Hide

2. Surprise your guests by dressing up as Santa Claws, the Beast from the South Pole.

3. Invite friends of many and no faiths and from across the political spectrum. Insist that they discuss only politics and religion. If the conversation lags, bring up the topic of sports teams.

4. Hold a seance and summon the spirits of dead-gifts-past: Soap on a Rope, the Gensu Slicer, 007 Perfume, Medieval Scholar Barbie.

5. Take any Martha Stewart recipe and add absinthe.

6. Spend an evening with your favorite nice-and-naughty person and insist that she or he be good, for goodness sake, if not excellent.

7. Host a small gathering of Philatelists, and have them display their holiday stamps from around the world.

8. Play "The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" backwards and listen for secret messages.

9. Sponsor a cage-match between Frosty the Snowman and Jack Frost.

10. After the chestnuts have been roasted on an open fire in the street where you live, put on a bright red nose (and nothing else), dance ecstatically, listen for the festive sounds of sleigh bells, dreidels, and police sirens.

"The Balloon of the Mind," by William Butler Yeats

 Reading/video of a very short poem by Mr. Yeats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpURzlJVDVw

Festival's End

Best not to overlook the courage

required to play out the festival

of days after everyone's gone home

and there's nothing left to see except

darkness eating windblown litter and dust. 

hans ostrom 2020

Dawn Testimony

I can testify: I saw the sky

fill up with light today. Palest

blue and mildest yellow

mixed, then enlarged like the feeling

of hope. Trees

could pose in silhouette, 

if they so chose. I can report

I smiled one of those smiles

you smile when you don't

know you're smiling. Yes,

it was just dawn, but 

I was there, and I can testify. 

hans ostrom 2020

Better Than Magic

Like salt shakers, stars

drop 40 million tons of dust

on Earth each year. You and I

and all the rest harbor some

of this dust, which doesn't glow

with sentiment, is

of a mineral order. So now

I have to recalibrate a

sense of my component parts.

Some drifted into Earth's

gravitational vase,

and I ate them or brushed

up against them, and the 

body took what came its

way, bits from a star explosion--

well, that's quite a thing,

better than magic. 

hans ostrom 2020

Clothing Catalogues

 {according to our mailbox, it's definitely catalogue season}

I like to look at clothing catalogues
because photographed models
look so glad. "This sweater makes
me very happy," says a photo of a
man. "We're both wearing hopeful
skirts," says a snapshot of two women.

Some clothes appear without models
but seem animated: arms of shirts
and blouses assert themselves.
"We won't wait for bodies to take
us traveling," says the cloth. Noble

prose describes the products:
"Traditional cashmere in contemporary
styles. Imported."  Retail catalogues
are a kind of comedy in which people
marry products in the end and prices
dance with prose. You see in a good
light what's for sale, gazing at
things you think might improve you.

hans ostrom 2011/2020

A Lake

 [a revised one from long ago]

A lake's a lovely dot

that should have ought

to have been if it weren't.

Lakeside, see the burnt

place inside stones:

campfire. The many zones

of any sort of lake

amaze: here fish wake,

there sleep. Shelves, shallows,

a glass surface where swallows,

evenings, select sweet bugs

to eat. Cool shade for slugs.

Shadows, where the muck

rules. A cove where a duck

feels safe and mutters.

Trees behave like shutters,

filtering light, allowing moss.

Humans can't help but toss

junk into lakes. I don't know why.

In the lake, see the sky.

Sit by the lake. My Lord, the sounds.

Even in small lakes life abounds,

from single-cell and bug to frog

to worms beneath a sunken log.

Fish jump, cruise, dive, and school.

Patient lakeside raccoons drool.

Kingfisher and eagle do espy,

and hawk with an awful eye

perceives a chipmunk by the lake.

(Back up that tree, for heaven's sake.

Made of snow or stream or spring,

a lovely, yes, a functional thing:

a blue acceptance, is a lake.

hans ostrom 2020