From a Diary of the Plague Year (13)

Sometimes I'm inside
hiding from the virus.
Sometimes I'm outside
hiding from the virus,
digging in the dirt around
fledgling vegetables
and forming flowers.

Inside or outside,
I also try to hide from
celebrities. Their faces,
peccadilloes, opinions,
and posts swarm. They're
not the norm but the fame
machine tries to make us
famished, hungry for
manufactured news

of celebs. It makes me
febrile, celebraphobic,
vised in by the virus
and the famous. I don't
know who most of them
are but must react as if I do.

Inside, old time reading
helps, hefting a book of words.
Outside, the worms and crows
and trees and fleas are not
famous and I am treated
as just another beast.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (12)

(song)

When I see us back then
We're laughing in the sun
Back when we were young
And thought the other
Was the one. 

Now that the plague's descended
Priorities amended
I thought I'd beat the rush,
Reach out and get in touch
After so long.

Sorry I mocked your favorite song
And broke your bestest bong
You cooked the clutch on
My silver green Camaro
And stole my cherished vinyl
of Ravel's Bolero.
This all seems so funny
After so long, so long ago.

[repeat chorus]

Hey, I'm glad you married Craig
Hey, please don't catch the plague
I hope this letter is okay
If not, I know you'll say
So, love from so long ago
After so long ago
Some days were great, you know?
Some nights so fierce, although
Our futures were not ever
Meant to be together

[repeat chorus]


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (11)

Kangaroos boppin and hoppin
through Aussie towns,
wild boars busting loose
in Barcelona, mountain
goats getting grub in Welsh
villages. O, come all ye
species into empty human spaces
the plague has opened up for you.

Smog clears, the moon's
asthma's under control,
and the sun can dispense
with its monocle. Baby
sea turtles samba down
an empty beach, sand to sea,
small and free.

Rabbits in suburbia rejoice
Eagles monitor impromptu
migrations from CEO chairs
set up on the wind. Pet dogs
and cats form revolutionary
cells, having caught some
scents of rising wildness
from outside.


hans ostrom 2020

From A Diary of the Plague Year (10)

Me, with machete,
chopping methodically at a jungle
of myths and lore,
breaking news and pointless views.
I'm headed and footed
to a village in search of clarity.
I'm told they reach consensus
about facts there. Does
such a paradise really exist?

Magnetic North still tells
my compass needles where
to settle down. My body
still needs water. Facts
are beautiful. Check
them. Check on them.
Cherish them.



hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (9)

A circus of emotions these days.
Under the big top, round and round
the cranium the white horse goes,
his acrobatic rider showing sinews.

The value of worry, like the stock
market, has plummeted. I feel
like a hobo who jumped off a train
of events and watched it

go by and away. Now
what, I thought. Not a question.


hans ostrom 2020

Imagine Religion

Imagine religion without
killing, without spiritual
extortion. Imagine religion
without obsession about
women, without greed.

Imagine religion keeping
children safe. Imagine it
absent exclusion and proud
certainty. Imagine religion
with warmth, humor, supple
thinking, generosity. Imagine

religion getting along with
religion, good friends in spirit.
Imagine religion with democracy,
with science, with Earth in mind.
Imagine religion that defers
to God on final judgments,
not on preachers' rage. Imagine
religion that trusts rational adults
to make rational choices within
the confines of community,
caring for our home, which is here.


hans ostrom 2020
hans ostrom 2020

More Than Enough in Ragusa

(southern Sicily)

In Ragusa most afternoons
I sat outside a cafe locals favored.
Iron tables. I didn't feel at home
there but I surrendered
my touristic pose to become
a mere outsider. My presence
seemed to amuse the waitresses,
whom I tipped respectfully.

I pecked at salads, sipped
water and coffee, scribbled,
looked from shade out at hot light
hitting brightly painted walls
and old stone buildings. I
was a large man in a white
linen shirt, and ursine scarecrow.
So much more than enough
that place provided.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (8)

Maybe birds like it
that we're nesting in place.
Their song-jabber's intense
this year. Like they're saying
We like the change of pace!

They're out there sampling
the Spring buffet, gathering
building materials, telling
migration jokes, nibbling
on suet pie, passing anti-cat
legislation. Spring

is bird time, citizens. They
are the bosses. If I make it to
next year, I will remember that.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (7)

I went outside in the dark just
to be out. A warm western wind
tricked me into thinking,
Everything's going to be all right.
It's good to fall for that intuitive
prank sometimes. Softens
the fatalism. I looked out at

cheap solar lights I'd placed
on the perennially flowered
slope, a private bee resort
in summer. Bees, I thought,
if only bees would show up.

I went back inside to shelter
in place, a phrase of our moment.
I held a good thought (useless,
I know) for people forced
to shelter out of place.


hans ostrom 2020

A Common Form of Alienation

I'm a common stock in search
of a future. A laugh looking
for a joke. A surrender seeking
a peace offering. A seduced
yearning for seduction. I'm a
blank in search of a blank.
A past that's lost its present.
I'm a solution without its
problem, and that's a problem.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (6)

The plague has us hunkered,
crouched socially behind boundaries.
The Scots started using hunker
as a verb sometime after 1700.
They may have grabbed it from
a stash of Norse words hidden
in on a heath somewhere. Hunker,

a swift ax blow of a word,
splits the syllables of
"observe social distancing"
and turns them into kindling.

Useful when, in your exhaustion
from holing up in your worry-den,
you can manage only a few
morphemes of talk or test:
"We're hunkered down. Love, Us."


hans ostrom 2020

Concrete Details

Concrete is abstract:
planes of gray, freeways,
slabs that call forth concepts:
overpasses, underpasses,
onramps, exits, and exchanges.

Wet and soft become
dry and hard. I used to love,
and weary of, mixing it
in a spinning drum. A bucket
of water, twelve shovels-full
of aggregate, three of Portland
cement (and some calcium


chloride in Winter). Then swaggering/
staggering with a barrow full
of wet and heavy--undisciplined
slop headed up a solitary
plank for the forms.


hans ostrom 2020

Bass and Bass

4:32 a.m., can't sleep,
can't stop thinking about
bass and bass. Bass guitar,
bass fishing. I assemble
do-it-yourself-dreams--
a lake where stringed
instruments swim, leap
for bugs while cranking
thudding beats. An

orchestra full
of slime-scaled instruments
playing Debassy's Wildlife
Biology Suite--the
audience gowned out
in mosquito nets and
hip waders. I order

my mind to order
itself: Stop this!
It opens its wide mouth
and laughs, teeth full
of black musical notes.


hans ostrom 2020