Detectives

 (homage to Rex Stout and Georges Simenon)

Crime disrespects. It exploits

routine. It is impolite, time-

consuming, and distracting.

Grudgingly, the good detective

identifies those who

should have known better,

most especially the entitled.

Intelligent cooking; sufficient

rest; optional, moderate

consumption of alcohol and

tobacco; solitude; reflection—

these are worth preserving,

even if it means working

for a living, extracting

folly and vice from the milieu.

Hence Jules Maigret and Nero Wolfe,

who would rather be left

alone but are drawn into prose

by their creators, into frays by

fate, necessity, duty. Efficient

plots spring from good manners.

Whatever takes one away from

reading, dining, conversation,

solitude, repose, or—however modest

it may be-one’s enclave must be criminal.

Good manners and good detection

don’t belong to social class but

come from a certain strength of mind.

If only everyone would think things through.

Everyone doesn’t; therefore, detection

is called for, is restoration of balances, is

a bother to be concluded quickly.

hans ostrom 1999-2021

Writer's Sky

a small moleskin notebook

exhumed itself

from a mound of scribbling--

the soft cover sky blue--

except with lavender 

lurking, teasing through.

it reminded scribbler me

of a summer Sierra Nevada

sky on certain days (no

days are certain): cloudless--

a sky that seemed too

blue and weirdly made me

yearn prospectively, wanting

never to leave some vague

paradise in my mind--

known, never visited. 

I recall staring as if sky

were painted like a vast ceiling

above pine trees. and then, yes,

I dropped the gaze, moved on to work

for wages--dust and heat--

pounding nails, digging dirt,

wheeling mortar; & after work

sleeping off a migraine 

in a dark basement,

getting up, sweat dried to shirt,

& scratching in a notebook. 

hans ostrom 2021

Forest Floor

forested canyon, sierra

nevada--we walked

among conifer columns

standing in living lithe

patience. our booted feet

landed quietly on annual

layers of pine needles,

each level a different color

of time, light tan on top,

and a darkening all the way

down to black fusion 

with soil, reabsorption--

perhaps a resurrection 

with water up, back up into

tree through root and cambrium,

bough, cone, seed, pollen--

or needle again, shaking

green in wind, staying

still in snow. 

hans ostrom 2021

House Sparrows in June

house sparrow--chest

dusted rose--lands on a line,

faces west, sings a languid,

bluesy thing, a call, a tune,

a testimony,

also a satire of communicating

wires and the rest of our mess.

a second sparrow lands--

birds beside themselves. 

more singing, sewed

together as dusk grows

lemony, then orange.

the first bird stops

singing and grooms

the second: time

soon to nest, close

up eyes, rest singing

throat and tongue--

one more day

one more day gone. 

hans ostrom 2021

You're Seeing Things

the idiom's "you're seeing things,"

meaning things that aren't there,

things that are not. maybe

a swish of wish fulfillment,

filaments of tropical optical

illusions, fusions of shapes

in the mind behind the eyes.

hope and fear make us tell

ourselves sensory lies. 

in truth (a country hard 

to find), whatever whats

are out there blink in 

and out of form. shiftiness

seems to be the quantum

norm. that's what they say,

the theys that write articles

about particles. we're all seeing--

sensing--things that are/are not

there. every gray boulder's

a bag of flickering electrons.

each crowd of people's an ad

hoc conference of arrivals

and gones. as reality's always

elsewhere, we agree temprorarily

to pretend present forms

can be trusted--can of soup,

freeway loop, chicken coop. 

roosters of routine doodle-do

us awake, and we wake from

one dawning dream into 

another. and another . . . .

hans ostrom 2021

A Thing Nearby

old narrow bookcase,

hand-sawed: pinewood

varnished dark, the grain

flowing like a creek at dusk.

traces of the maker's hand

remain--his keyhole saw

and chisel, sandpaper. 

it's good to see the life

in things falsely called

inanimate--spirits of tools,

trees, crafters, days:

evaporated moments way

before I lived. this bookcase

was when I was not. turn now,

see and touch a thing nearby,

retrieve its history alive in your

mind. imagine its granular past

marked by the form of the thing. 

hans ostrom 2021

Garden's Greens

spinach leaves bring

a green so deep

it looks like an ominous

sea. genial lettuces

foreground more 

light in green, sometimes

whisper blond secrets.

kale makes us think

of Russia--tough,

green without sheen,

unafraid of invading

weeds, partial 

to hot soup. carrots,

always recalcitrant,

offer delicate floral

tops at this stage,

suggest positive 

orange thinking under

dirt. and potatoes,

dear spuds in their

group effort. plain

green tops as practical

as old bricklayers.

such lumpen, golden

manufacturing occurs

down there in Tuber

World, a dark quiet

factory. peas and beans:

what to say? so madly

manic in their way.

pods leap out overnight,

tendrils reach and entwine

with weird desire,

and, friend, you had 

better be ready with 

bucket. oh, greens

of the garden, we

bless you, we missed you

in Winter's gray dungeon,

dreaming seed dreams. 

hans ostrom 2021

Actual Art

Walls of art marching

against sensory perception,

walls exhaust me. Not as much 

as grunt-work at the gravel

plant. Still. Excess of art

fries neurons, sends the self

searching for a burrow.

The Hermitage hit me

like a tsunami. Bus loads

of tourists triggered

a riptide. I ran gasping

to the gift shop. A way

to ease back into reality.

Among postcard re-

productions, I found 

an original print from an

engraving, contemporary

Russian artist. Brown ink.

A simple St. Petersburg

street scene--bridge, river,

stolid building. The cashier,

a lovely woman with Nordic

blue eyes, said, "This is

actually art." "Yes--so glad

I found it," I said. Cold Wars

new and old did not stop

us from agreeing. Somewhere

in St. Petersburg, the artist

toiled at her day job. Outside

the Hermitage with my 

actual art in a brown paper

sack, I accepted September

sun warmth gratefully.

Breathed, the great palace

of art behind my back.

hans ostrom 2021

Back at Your Place

when you're nobody special,

no one in particular besides 

your particular self, with those

eyebrows of yours and memories

of a childhood pond-raft called

"Sinking Slowly," a taste 

for fried trout and boiled potatoes,

an innate attraction to women

whose figures (a euphemism)

some people called "voluptuous,"

your sad, haphazard collections

of stamps and baseball cards

(the latter cut clumsily from

cereal boxes), your affection

for a tan chenille bed-spread

(and for the term "bed-spread"),

and a relationship to books

some found overly intense, then

it's hard, when you go to school,

to work and parties, events

and protests; yes, it's difficult

to become the additional and 

enhanced other, the one you're

expected to be, a Situational

You. It is exhausting, in fact,

and back at your place, again,

resting, reading, perhaps thinking

of a voluptuous woman with

whom you engaged in awkward

discourse while inhaling her

natural and manufactured

perfumes, you might ask, 

with tiresome faux naivete, 

"Whose idea was Society,

anyway?" Anyway, you are

and shall remain, just you. 

hans ostrom 2021

Sometimes Shame

sometimes shame seems

like a thin scum on a still pool.

other times, like an avalanche

aimed at what's left of your

self worth. shame can make

you want to walk away from 

yourself--until you come to the

end of the chain and recall

you can't do that. some days

you find you feel like a boss.

you fire shame, tell it to haul

its slithery useless self off

your job site. because you

have work to do. because

you know again that shame 

is not the same as you. 

hans ostrom 2021

Collect Call

"Collect Call": nothing but a cast-off

piece of telecommunications junk. 

At the dig, go down a few layers,

pull it up, wipe off the dirt. Yeah,

you're in a phone booth--upright

glass coffin, accordion door, a fat

greasy pawed-over phone book

dangling from a chain like a ham. 

Pop your only coin in the phone's

chrome slot, hear the black box

taste it, then swallow it, gulping. 

Dial zero & as the wheel turns,

listen to it skip over numbers

in ticks. Woman's voice. Always. 

Profession: "Operator," which is

the first words she says. Say,

"I'd like to make a collect call,

person-to-person." Say city,

state (province, country). The

name of the person you imagine

will not be there. Spell name

for Operator. Suspense. Then

the purring of an analogue phone

ringing. Now enter a virtual

probation zone. Hear click 

and voice. Operator: "I have

a collect call person-to-person

from . . . . will you accept?"

Wait while wrong voice seeks

right voice. Do not speak yet.

Person you expected not to be

there is there. Operator repeats

operator-speak. "Will you accept

the charges?" "Yes." "Go ahead."

Exhilarated, you chat and chit 

before explaining your desperate need.

. . . Yeah, you had to find a phone

booth and have a coin. Or ask to use

somebody's phone. The person

had to be there, not next door, 

and had to accept being the one

from whom the phone company,

not carrier, collected. Had to want

to be the person in person-to-person.

An Operator had to broker

your intimacy, your broke-ass

status. Maybe someone had died,

or you just got off a bus or had

survived a hitched ride. Your

car broke down. You'd woke up

robbed except for a quarter. And

you were in a phone booth lit

up like a tanning booth. Digital

virtuality lay ahead in Time,

circling a black hole. You were

stuck in a here, back there,

cold, holding a a grimy black

receiver on a chrome cord. And

here it is, in your hand, the Collect

Call (Person-to-Person). And you

don't want it. That's not why you

came to dig in the dig. It's awkward,

quaint, and stupid. You throw it back

and get your phone wafer out

and tap it twice, maybe three times,

and talk as you ride your present

moment, clouds and mists, fogs and

storms of unheard voices all around you. 

But if your in the booth,

and the call has ended, and before

shove the door aside: take that coin

the phone barfed back. 

hans ostrom 

San Diego from the Air

from the air

the spread of hovels

looks like a scaly skin

disease only saltwater stops.

mansions are the

the same as shacks, just

larger roofs. tower, warehouse?

no matter. 

all belong to an 

untreatable scourges. it

will run its

course. our course. to

what end, who can say? many

do say. an

apocalypse of

capitalisms' necessary 

addiction to

growth, manifest 

infestation of the mildly

named "development"?

climate catastrophe? or

just everything as it should be?

oh, do not worry.

everything's under control.

Our Lord Economy is Growing.

enclaves of wealth

under siege, desperate mobs

climbing hills and walls, waves of a blood tide?

in san diego

they talk a lot about the "cost

of living." their definition's narrow. 

on the ground, in

traffic, some wonder, does this

make sense, does this make sense at all?

hans ostrom 2021

Our Grandest Illusion

Even if what we know is incorrect,

and most of it is, 

how could it not be, 

it's knowledge: it's in there,

camped in memory, sending

smoke signals from box canyons,

tramping around neuron trails. 

The grandest illusion of all,

knowledge, freeze-dried 

in old books, hoarded like grain

and gunpowder in electronic

forts, marbled into our speech

and memories, alive in lore,

legend, lies, logos, ethos,

eros, and pathos. Still,

add it all up, and it's just 

a single torch held up

against abysmal black

darkness in a forest

no one's yet named on

one of a trillion planets. 

The one and the zero 

in binary strings: we know

everything, we know nothing,

a lot, a little bit, maybe, hard

to say, wait and see. You know?

hans ostrom 2021