Listen: sunrise stirs bugs
in dry grass. The long
whine of a steel guitar
curves into a thin blue highway.
This peace is easy to take, I'll tell you.
We kiss, kick off covers
light as dead butterflies,
and grab each other, laughing.
Your radio drops out a three-chord,
two-minute-fifty song,
too much like other songs,
just like those tin napkin
and sugar dispensers
that look alike always alike
on sticky plastic countertops
at all them truck strops,
where I’ll rest elbows,
the thick roar of sixteen
tires still in my ears. Darling,
if I chat up a waitress
while she's filling my
Thermos with coffee,
know it's only out of
habit and good manners.
You know my heart growls
like a diesel for you when
dawn spills across the hood
of the Peterbilt, and I think
ahead to gearing down on
the grade sloping into
your place here where
the creek sings out back.
circa 1987/2021
[revised]
Go on and cut the top off-a that mountain
to get your coal, Mr. High Pockets. You
can't cut that high-pitched wail out of the air
where the mountain was
and shall ever be, in God's eyes.
And all them strings get picked and strummed,
chorded and teased, til here comes a
tightly braided tune, careful and true,
like the long gray hair
of a matriarch reading her Bible in blue
moonlight, rocking and praying She's
as heart-broken and reconciled as a ballad
about some young'ns gone too soon. Music
of the hills distills sadness, strains it
through an upright tradition
that Nashville goddamn tried to ruin.
But could not. And will not.
Between Michigan and State,
she was caught without a coat
among wrought-iron intricacies
of histories. Her sheer blouse
panicked in cold air. She was
going somewhere. Her schedule
showed a route of escape. Not more
than a block from State
and Michigan, she again seized
a grip on fate, held on, got back
in the swing of the thing, yes,
back in the sway of her days.
hans ostrom circa 1990/2021
this river swims in time. this sky
flies through emptiness. we live
forever every moment as love
falls into people. fuel
consumes
fire, and rain drinks Earth.
I saw
a thousand angels moving through
a silver valley. low
clouds
picked them up, changed them
into snow, conveyed them over
mountains, let them go. oh, let them go.
hans ostrom circa 1995/revised 2021
[second version]
[1860 HERSCHEL in Photogr. News 11 May 13 The possibility of taking a photograph, as it were by a snap-shotemof securing a picture in a tenth of a second of time.]
(Quoted from the Oxford English Dictionary online)
Snapshot
By any means, steal an image,
mark an instant's interplay between
light and facial shape. Shuffle it
off to memorabilia, through which
someone may rummage some day
not soon, in boxes or in Cloud.
Whoever it is will wonder
whose image got swiped
back here, where at the gathering
we think we know who's here, what
they're wearing, what they show. So
yes, of course, seize a sample
the flow, stabilize it in one of
the ways we know. Store it, for it
may be of interest one day, could be.
hans ostrom 2014/2021
[second version]
Each string ensemble player
leaned, turned, and swayed
in chairs differently as
they played. The women's
backs looked strong in gowns.
The men's feet in black shoes
stayed fixed to the floor.
Sometimes violin-bows poked
straight up as if reach for unseen
clouds just above the players'
heads. Portly cellos had to be
held up like friendly drunks.
They mumbled low genial
gratitude. One man stood
above the players, waving
his arms and a stick as if
to try to get someone's
attention. The violinists
may have glanced at him,
I don't know, but mostly
they cuddled their polished
wooden instruments, and
let their bodies feel the music,
and let us feel the vibrations
that they herded in the hall.
[second version]
the man wearing a thin sweatshirt
and no hat stands at an uncovered
bus stop in freezing rain. he isn't me.
he's trying to light a cigarette. his
attempt becomes a gesture--
ludicrous but noble, less than
tragic but not bad at all.
he's inside whatever being alive
is for him, and i'm inside what
being alive is to me. i see him
from a warm place out of the weather.
if i were like jesus i'd go to the
man and perform a miracle--
like getting that cigarette lit,
or giving him money,
or giving him my parka, or
embracing him. he might
like all of that. except for
the embrace. he might
bite my nose off for that.
i don't do any of these things,
because it's easier not to,
and it's acceptable that i
think i'm not his keeper.
at moments like these, i
think of Bukowski,
who--i gather from his
words, i never knew
the man--thought like
jesus sometimes, i mean
with a similar toughness.
tough on everybody--
including, let's say especially,
the reflective, ignoble fuckers in
warm parkas out of the
weather.
[second version]
This complex isn't simple: boxes
within boxes within boxes. Figures
stroll across a neon-glossy floor
toward dark caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people
photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them
is morbid, at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment that time
has already departed, leaving
behind only ribbons of light
that spool images
flickering imperceptibly
on screens
and kernels of corn explode
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene I've been in
may have been the better movie.
