Fires in the Pacific West

Blue wood smoke from wildfires

100 miles away choked the copse.

A morose old traveler sat down 

in it beside a pond. He thought At

least the pond's still here. As was

his fear for everything. An

hallucinated frog lifted its head

from the smoke-scummed water

level, said Nothing you will ever

write, say, do, or think will change

this world, okay? The old man

had always loved amphibians,

the great adapters. He asked Should

I stop caring, then?  But the frog

had absented its green mirage, 

and so: alone, talking in the woods.

Even if you try to be loud, your

voice sounds less than the tiny

ratchet-grind of one grasshopper

leaping. Yes, no more caring today.

Only walking. To home. If it's still

there. If not, more walking. 

hans ostrom 2021

Talking at Night

Maybe you're high, maybe not.

Either way, you're half of 

a conversation that grows

in the night. A seed of chit-

chat roars into a jungle 

of topics, blather, laughter,

and--for this neighborhood,

anyway--deep questions.

You wonder, at the end of 

night, what these are for,

these night talks. Nothing's

bought or sold, no politics

of the moment, name-dropping,

weather, or work. Nor set stories,

thank god. Just talk--

rare these days, these days

when words get nailed to 

walls, kidnapped, suffocated

by intent ignorance, shot dead. 

Just talk, easy as a summer tide.

hans ostrom 2021

Breathing in Blue Lunar Light

He had intended 

to seize the day.

Then night came.

Day slipped away.

He was relieved. 

Night seized him. 

Hot winds and nausea. 

He didn't believe what

he knew or know

what he believed.

Waking, midnight, he

saw blue lunar light

that mellowed air,

turned worries  slight.

He breathed. And breathed. 

hans ostrom 2021

Wright Park

In Tacoma the old man

crossing Wright Park

will not use a path

and ignores the statue

of Schiller, a German

poet who never visited

Tacoma--his loss. I can't

find a verb to say what 

the old man does as he 

goes up the slope

to the conservatory. It is

his own peculiar old

white-haired way of walking,

wearing a blue windbreaker

on a hot afternoon. Perfect

verbs and muscular 

buttocks belong to the young.

A woman in orange shoes

floats past him. Her profile

is regal. Now someone full

of Jesus moves through the park

preaching to purple-eyed drunks.

Acorns drop like hail pellets.

A three-year-old roll down a

slope, bedazzled, giggling.

The old man smiles at this,

arrives at the conservatory,

cough and spits. 

hans ostrom 2021

Fear Tonight

Tomorrow I'll be ready

to attack the tasks at hand,

jaw set, mind sure.

Tonight I will be frightened.

Tomorrow I would gladly

board a submarine, float

under darkness, sounding depths,

negotiating canyons.

Tonight under a single lamp,

all the hands of fear flutter

like a deck of cards cast

overboard from a broken boat. 

hans ostrom 2021

As We Build

Two dime-sized yellow-green butterflies

copulate on a pine board we

nailed at an angle to brace a partition. 

They're connected like duelists

about to pace: one board's edge,

the other perpendicular on the broader

plane. Their antennae do not so much

as twitch: wings rigid as steel, eyes

like polished obsidian pebbles, placidly

glazed. Amid slamming hammer blows,

electric saw scream, and sawdust storm,

they're lost in the depth and breadth 

of regeneration. As we raise another wall,

it's sap-wet ribs seem to bless with shadows

in a geometric pattern these two insects

abstracted in their act and moment. Around

us: loafs of Sierra Nevada mountains,

dark green with pines and firs. Canyon air

is thick with cicadas, dragonflies, bees, gnats,

and other bugs--corpuscles of energy whose

names I'll never know. Swollen knuckles

of thunderhead fists crowd an eastern sky.

There's a humid, thick, barely audible humming

of summer's abundance, of bright boulders

ringing with heat, a hum of hot southern air,

of soaked clouds about to blow up. Hammering

stops, saw stops: we break for water. The 

procreating butterflies relax. Their four 

antennae shift slightly as if nudged by breath

of a whisper. They shake the drowse 

of loving death from their rejuvenated

wings, rise and fly and depart this half-framed

human dwelling, and they join the inflamed air. 

circa 1981/2021 hans ostrom

Funeral in Los Angeles

Cancer took her quickly. Now

cars of her procession

move like dark cells through

traffic of the Los Angeles Freeway,

a daily purgatory.

A silver military jet

becomes a needle of glare 

that tugs a thread of chalky

vapor. The plane cruises

above faraway suede hills

well ahead of its sound.

And the family in its sealed,

air conditioned autos is driven

ahead of understanding.

A lavender dolphin, anchored

like a dirigible above a used-car

lot, smirks as they pass.

Her daughter runs a finger over

the upholstery. She thinks,

"It's just upholstery."

And at the cemetery, too,

everything has become

only what it is: asphalt, grass,

trees, people--the landscape

of a children's book.

Where they bury her,

upright headstones are forbidden.

Marble, granite, and brass must

be inlaid so tractor mowers

may keep grass immaculate.

Beneath a canopy near the dug

grave, the daughter looks toward

those old brown distant hills.

She wonders--as her relatives

whisper quietly and cry--why

the world seems to have been 

completely prepared for

the death of her mother. 

circa 1979/2021 hans ostrom

Lane Change

Late night in a Central Valley

California city, where farm air

sniffs neon. Blacktop, moist after

rain, gleams. Phosphorescent lamps

and traffic signals hang in cheery

gloom. Everybody's left the party.

I drift the silver-green Chevy

over to a lane for 

       LEFT OR U TURN ONLY and

stop.

A Ford rolls up in another lane,

obeys a red light, engine grumbling

in that Ford way. (This happened

long ago, when people befriended cars

and trucks.) I see the mouth

of the driver, a young woman, singing

the song my radio's singing. (We used

car radios then.) She turns her head

and, singing, smiles through two windows,

turns back and sees

        GREEN

and off with an automatic-transmission

(such things mattered then)

start goes her gunned Mustang

(me in my Camaro), wheels spitting

water and grit--gone. Just gone. Now

I sing the song. It liked her 

better. I murder it. The

         RED

light winks into a green arrow.

How lovely, an Imagist poem. 

Awake, the Camaro lurches,

goes through engine-crescendos

as I manage gas pedal brake pedal

clutch pedal stick-shift steering & a certain

sad projection of Camaro cool . . .

. . . to follow the Ford would have

been just plain wrong. "On a number

of levels," as the academics (I was 

trying to become one) used to say

in that former farm-town that grows

research. Learning her name, hearing

her voice in talk and song, inducing

her laughter--yes, a belly laugh--. . .

not wrong. Not possible. I turn

not around but sufficiently LEFT

as never to see the Ford the woman

again, at least according to my poet's

sense of statistical probability (everyone

but me carried a thick calculator then).

Sad and lonely, I stride from car

to bad buggy bungalow door and say

No not sad and lonely but alive and

the washed air smells fine and I might

have a glass of red wine.

hans ostrom circa 1975/2021

She Returns to the Farm

          (with memories of Tom Rickman)

It is raining. There are apples.

It is. There are. Apples, rain, mud,

land. Land not built on. Yet. At 

night, such quiet, much quiet,

too much . . . .

The reckless ones died early.

The cautious ones grew old and died.

The orchard grew into a farm, 

which grew into an operation. 

Thus orchard, a young grafted

tree,  became a mature

producer. Which became an

autonomous hybrid banyan/apple

tree walking around the place,

planting itself. She

does/doesn't understand. 

It is raining. There are apples.

The money is good. She can't stay. 

hans ostrom 2021

Jealous Desert

walking in a desert

looking for, smelling for,

water, honey, and home--

the desert is home--

look, there's a bone

that once was part

of one who walked

here: here goes on

as it went even when

water covered it.

walking the desert.

it is jealous of water. 

hans ostrom 2021

Ancestry

 1

My name, pattern of nucleic

acids, and documentation become

a dried leaf glued to

a petrified tree in a fractal forest.

2

The earlier the photograph,

the harder the faces, the darker

the clothes. Work, grief, God,

and fear sculpted these faces. 

3

One cannot behold the soupy

sea of ancestry and still cling

to racism and sad notions

of superiority. A trillion 

accidents set against social

calamity--not "bloodlines"--

birthed each of us. Every one

of us wailed when air first

thumped us in the lungs.

4

Everybody's common. The 

rest is a confidence game.

5

A distant relation died 

attacking a castle. He's buried

in digitized public records.

Genealogists visit his grave.

It's nothing personal. 

6

I have to override the program,

which tells me a relation was 

too young to be a mother. That's 

rape for you. 

7

Genealogy's a pageant of 

folly, a carnival of silence, an

absurdity of great meaning, 

a permanent promise of connection.

8

Sooner or later, our names

become unintended jokes.

9

People travel and travel and

travel. Meanwhile, clever ones

convince them that dreams of

belonging to a special group

are real. Nation, tribe, empire--

that sort of thing. 

10

Humanity is composed 

of women and certain

hangers on. 

11

We're all cousins.

12

On average, each extended

family includes one genealogist 

who insists on boring everyone

with dates, places, and photos. 

In my family, I am he. 

Mountain Saloon

Darkness in daylight and a sweet

whiskey smell said Hey

to six-year-old me when

my Aunt Nevada opened the door

to the Buckhorn saloon. I

registered a glowing brass

pipe running the length

of a dark varnished bar,

down where feet are. 

An altar of bottles--brown,

clear, green--gathered itself

around a long mirror.

An an antlered deer's head

eyed me. Aunt went back

to get broom, bucket, and mop.

She and Uncle owned the bar. 

After dinner, my dad freshly

showered would fall asleep 

in a chair before going to the

second job: pouring drinks

at this place. Tending bar. 

Caves, tombs, hideouts, 

temples, chapels, dens of

equity, harbors, imagined

carnivals of sex and power:

later I'd learn what dark bars

could become--neon glowing

outside, light in darkness. 

hans ostrom 2021

Competition

competition was a custom

systems craved. you caved

to the carnival of conflict.

sometimes. not your preference.

so now you lean against

an old black oak and watch

them in their ruddy scrums

out there, the promise of glory

palmed long ago by a hustler

who's already out of town. 

hans ostrom 2021