Video/reading of Winters' short poem. Winters (1900-1968) taught for many years at Stanford University. He was an independent figure in Modern poetry.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Monday, April 18, 2022
Earth Isn't Worried
Lightning-boiled, roiled
clouds and con-thunder-cussed
air, & down here twisted wind
drives cars and houses into trees.
However Earth is calm. Strata
& old parched channels
rest easy underground. Deep
roots clutch bedrock
& ride the sphere-spin.
Layers of clay and gravel,
lava, sand, loam, and petrified
wood lie together like siblings
camping out. Earth isn't worried.
hans ostrom 2022
Friday, April 15, 2022
"Like the Touch of Rain," by Edward Thomas
39-second recording/video of the short lyric poem, "Like the Touch of Rain," by Edward Thomas (1878-1917), English/Welsh poet:
National Anthems
If you're a nation,
you need an anthem,
which comes with a flag.
Xenophobia's optional.
although it may not
seem so. Musicians
grind through the melodies
like millers making flour.
Anthems seem to take an hour
when you're waiting for the
game or match or memorial
to start. Hand over heart,
hat off, stand up if you can,
pretend to sing along
the way children do--all
up to you. In America's,
of course, bombs and rockets
go off in the midst of civil
war--which never ends.
People treat anthems with more
respect than they do humans.
hans ostrom 2022
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Ice Hockey
(revised)
They're painters on skates
who brush and dab a cold canvas
they whirl and glide on.
They're sleep-walkers
in pajamas, wandering
on a bright dream's stage--
everyone else in darkness,
looking on, transfixed.
Hornets and wasps
in snarling squads,
swarm out of the nest--
sent mad by one
black fly gliding among
them, a dark dot
playing dead, then jetting off.
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
More Money Than God
Anyone who has any money,
even a thoughtless penny,
has more money than God:
in what universe would God
want cash, coins, credit, creepy
crypto-grift, currency, micro-
change, stocks, bundled bonds,
bullion, or any token that smokes
with agreed upon mullioned
meaning? I swear to God,
billionaires have become
like Zeus and his merry band
of psychopaths on a celebritized
Olympus. Metastatisized wealth.
Yes, excess morphed into abscess.
hans ostrom 2022
Monday, April 11, 2022
Preferable Dusk
Do Parisians still call dusk
l'heure bleue? I should ask
the internet gods. At sundown
in the Sierra Nevada, green
pine trees seem gold, sift
mild breezes. You sense
raccoons, deer, and coyote
getting ready for the night-shift.
Rustlings in the brush. I've
always felt more dread at dawn
than dusk. Jaws of jobs I hated
waited then. Fresh evils
and the cackling of the pious
lurk in morning headlines.
Dusk equals After Work, a time
to cook and think, to hear
jazz or savor silence, to sniff
the darkling air--like a coyote.
hans ostrom 2022
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Beside a Farm Pond
On the green pond
faint ripples roll slowly,
just kiss the bank. Beside
this quiet water, you don't
have to pretend to know.
Unseen fish snooze
in mud. Frogs--they grunt
and chirp. Birds flit and fly
and riff their trills. It isn't
nature out here. It isn't
anything you have to name.
Eyes wide open, you sit
in nowhere. You're here, it
seems. What seems? It.
hans ostrom 2022
Thursday, March 31, 2022
"Small Poem for April"
This small poem honors
smooth blue pebbles,
waking up to a localbird chorus each day,
the price of pollen
(sneeze-blasts), stalwart friends,
more and more and more light,
fair wages, and rest.
hans ostrom
2018/revised 2022
Saturday, March 26, 2022
"What Survives," by Rainer Maria Rilke
Recording/video of a short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, approved for use for educational purposes, taken from allpoetry.com site. Langstonify youtube channel.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
The Rose Robe
(La rose robe [1864] painted by Jean Frédéric Bazille)
the rose robe glowed,
holding its own light,
as last sunlight shone
on white buildings
down there in the town.
she sat on a broad
stone ledge, taking
a break from house
and people too self-
involved to care about
a mild breeze
that each evening
met her and teased trees.
she rested her long, strong
brown arms, letting hands
lie on a night-black apron.
What she thought
was no one's concern
but hers. cool air
found her neck
and shoulders. her tired
feet in gray house
shoes napped on stone
like two cats.
she'd sewn the pink
robe's sleeves herself
before summer settled,
knowing how they'd
sit above her elbows
on evenings just like
this one. like her,
women down in town
longed to linger outside
stuffy rooms,
to think, and to listen to
sparrows sing
themselves to sleep
as stray charcoal clouds
drifted across
a chalk-blue sky.
hans ostrom 2022
Monday, March 21, 2022
Trust and the Old Tree
You can rely on certain
people until. Until.
An old tree knows
in its fibers that sky
giving rain and sun
might one day blast
with lightning. That
the mountain holding
soil and root-anchoring
rocks might one night
smash with a boulder-
brutal landslide or
a roaring avalanche.
Trust is always contingent,
temporary. Is really not
to be trusted. It's the
sturdiest kind of hope.
Sway with it as it lasts.
hans ostrom 2022
Friday, March 11, 2022
it seems you fainted
you felt yourself going,
which might describe life.
or death. a wobble & brain-light
switched off. started to crouch,
hoping to . . .
then . . . ? you woke
slowly, with such calm,
like dawn in fog,
into a mild dream,
a viscous stream-creek.
imagined you were
in bed--no: a table leg,
cords of some kind. so,
you got up: a fiction.
woke again.
cold ceramic under your
neck. will, a boss,
ordered you to get
up. wide-stanced, you
lurched toward a factual
bed, found it, lay down.
slept, woke to a person
telling you, "your forehead's
bleeding." you wanted
some blood to trickle
in your mouth--a child's
thought chugging
by in awareness
like a slow catfish in
a warm honey pond. a
chat ensued. and
old technology--
blood pressure cuff,
flashlight in eyes. fingers
on wrist to receive telegraph
message. a tuning in to your
heartbeat as if it were
espionage radio. blood
cleaned away, gauze
like a dry loveless kiss.
a diagnosis of low blood
pressure, a kind of bad
weather, and dehydration,
a kind of bad climate. water.
back to sleep, no dreams
allowed. fainting, what a thing.
hans ostrom 2022
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