Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Kind of Blue
("Kind of Blue," Miles Davis album, 1959)
kind of blue, sweetly
sad, tart despair.
kind of blue, like
you, when you don't
know what to do or
how to stop or slow
the world's deluge
of evil but must step
around deep inert
blue to finish chores,
open doors, lend a
hand. kind of blue--
like a lonely, thoughtful
trumpet blown
by a man deep
inside the music--
a spirit inside
an ear-shaped cave.
hans ostrom 2024
Saturday, May 4, 2024
Thursday, May 2, 2024
The Woman in the Pasture
Roaming one of your thought
neighborhoods, you hear a coin
hit a hard floor, listen as it
oscillates its way into settling flat.
You drift into a vast hall
where a shaft of sunlight
pings off the silvery coin:
you go over, lean, and look.
Symbols on it perplex.
Now a horse snorts,
and the hall becomes a pasture
& the coin becomes
a pendant nestled
in the cleavage of a woman's
brown breasts. "So that belongs
to you, then?" you ask. "No,
but you do," says she.
hans ostrom 2024
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Monday, April 29, 2024
Zen Weeding
At last I attacked
a rude section of weeds
in the veg garden. I dug,
pulled, yanked, ripped,
shook, and tossed plants
with white ganglia roots.
I sweat, took off my jacket,
got chilled, put it back on.
A rain squall came. I told
myself to stay in the weeding
moment. Zen weeder. I couldn't.
My mind hopped around
like water drops on a hot
griddle. But trying to stay
in the moment kept me
weeding, at least. Half-
zenned, half the weeds gone,
drenched, I scurried inside.
hans ostrom 2024
Galoshes
Great word, not a great boot.
Made of rubber, with metal clips,not cloth or leather laces.
They kept my feet
dry but not warm. In
snow, they leaked.
What a joy to get them
& wet wool socks off,
to put dry socks on
and heat my feet
near the speckled
cast iron HOME COMFORT
stove, throbbing
with oak wood warmth.
The wants of a 10-year-
old, funneled down
to the wish for warmth and
a grudge against galoshes.
hans ostrom 2024
Saturday, April 27, 2024
happenings
rustling of a
raven's wingstrilling, as a
sparrow sings
scratching as a
mouse hides things
segments of a
bat's brown wings
look at how the
green lichen clings
& lust imagines
lavish flings
memory hears
faint echoings
each day: infinite
happenings
hans ostrom 2024
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Escapes
An elephant escaped
the Point Defiance Zoo
and strode the streets
of Tacoma briskly, briefly,
as if going to work.
At a summer party
my parents threw, outside
in the High Sierra, the ever-
silent plumber, Otto,
sipped whiskey. He
saw a horse come up
to the pasture fence.
Otto climbed the fence
& leapt on the horse,
which galloped and tossed
him off. Otto got up,
came back, climbed over,
and sipped more whiskey.
First time
her husband struck her,
she loaded the two kids
and some luggage
in the Chevrolet and drove
away, {No more of that shit,}
she said to her friend.
The old woman
who had fought cancer
for five years lay
in a hospice bed,
comatose--but suddenly
woke--tried to get up
and run away. One last
attempt before
entering the light.
hans ostrom 2024
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Ancestry
You collect photos, public records,
articles,, obits. Follow DNA maps.Recover family lore. As you work,
you float out on a cloud,
looking down on all those people
you will never know
and who will never know you.
The mothers and miners, soliders
and bankers, caped eccentrics,
farm wives who plowed, gay
married uncles, preachers.
You cannot know them, only
scraps left behind, ghostly
outlines in chalk. They are
your family. They are not
your family. You want to build
a castle out of names, places, facts.
And live there, calling it Family.
It is a grand, fascinating
illusion, this ancestry, these crumbs
leading into a forest of the dead.
hans ostrom 2024
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