A Tale of Two Farmers!

The Manhattan Transfer - How High The Moon w/ Ella Fitzgerald - The Grammys

The Six-Drawer Bureau

In a room of this rented,

creaky, tired house, a thick
brown six-drawer bureau
stoutly stares at me. Although
made mostly of empty space
(modern physics claims), it

convinces me of its reality.
One drawer contains my socks
and T-shirts: thus have I put
my faith in illusion. Reality

takes me seriously: a bus
will crush if I get in its way.
The weather's cold today.

I retreated to this room to rest,
to read, to think, to scribble.
I think I'm probably a real
illusion to myself. I think I'll nap.

hans ostrom 2025

World's Worst Spy

I would have been the worst of spies:

undisciplined, distracted--staring at a lovely
woman while I was s'posed to follow
another nation's spook. Forgetting codes
and passwords, and reading poetry
instead of pilfered documents.

I prob'ly would be tempted
to offer an exchange of knowledge
with the enemy, so that each side
would know exactly what the other
knew, and knew about the other.

This would cut down on expenses
And maybe make the world safer: Do
you scoff at this? I scoff. It's not the way
the agnonistic world works.

Too often I ask of ways
the agonistic world works: is
this trouble really called for?
Aren't there simpler ways?
I would have been the worst
of spies. I fear if I had been a spy,
my own side would have had me
shot.

hans ostrom 2025

Triolet for a Cold Spring Day

It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.

We felt that we had earned some easy balm.
I hunch inside my coat beside the bay.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
The wind slaps boats and outlaws calm.
Whether the Lord's our shepherd, I can't sy.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
We felt that we had earned some easy balm.

hans ostrom 2025

Steve Perry & Willie Nelson - Faithfully (Official Video)

A Synesthetic Week

Monday is a washed-out
pale gray like an overcast
sky. Tuesday's
some kind of blue.

Wednesday is tan
like sand, and Thursday
is a murky purple like
egg-plant hide.

Friday's brown--
old but polished
oxford shoes. And
Saturday is rusty

red--like cinnabar
or certain kinds of clay.
Pearl gray, subtle glow:

that is Sunday.

hans ostrom 2025 

A Place Called Not

These days I ask

the dead stupid questions
like "Where are you?"

They answer with
ghostly shrugs,
phantom eye-rolls,
and other kinds

of silence. Cremation
or burial or just plain
rotting: tiny bits take
the place of bodies,

the place of minds
as fabulous as palaces--
dancing, insights,
laughter, jokes, similes,
sadness, crafts, and dreams!

The dead are in a place
I'm moving toward:
a genral locale called Not.

hans ostrom 2025

Good to Hear

Sometimes the sea shells

are so plentiful,
beached waves rattle
like a percussionist's gourd.

Discerning seagulls
pick through what's cast up,
get lucky sometimes,
find meat.

We sit at sunset
looking at light gleam
on crinkled water:
a pre-historic scene.

I say "I love you, you
say "I love you." We both
speak Matter-of-Fact
fluently nowadays.

But still:
it is good to know
someone loves us
and says so.

hans ostrom 2025

Fashion Sonnet

The fashions come and go,

drifting in like sparkling snow.
Buttons, zips, and cloths,
woolens for the moths.

Silly cuts and dyes,
laces through the eyes.
New York, Par-ee, Milan--
the models want to yawn.

The cotton comes from soil,
the sweatshops do the toil.
The famous want our gaze--
surplus value is what pays:

after capital infusion.
Fashion: just an illusion.

hans ostrom 2025

Ladybug

The design is Art Deco meets mid-century sci-fi:

a seemingly seamless blood-orange red, 

hard enamel dome (with 5 black spots)--

which can break in half to let wings open.

A tiny black and crafty head--with

the machinery to bite aphids and humans. 

Six of the smallest black legs

in insect show business. Two antennae. 

Coccinellididid is the Latin name--

which in my head I hear sung with a Latin

beat (try it). In California, ladybugs

migrate from the Big Valley to the Sierra

for summer. I'm told as many as thirty

million can swarm in a quarter acre--

and not behave like locusts or other

pests (humans, for example).

Intelligent Design? Tempting, but no:

an example of what Evolution does because

it has all the time in the universe plus

no deadlines. Ladybugs make me smile

thinly (hello again). Unless they bite, at

which point I cast them off in a huff.

hans ostrom 2025

"I Want," by Fernando Pessoa

"Claire de Lune," by Paul Verlaine