Dutiful Blues

He saw that she,
like him, was locked
into an acceptable life
that held no interest
anymore. They

exchanged polite
comments, maybe
at a cafe or on the job.
The glances they
shared never found

words because words
can involve truth
and risk. Each had
decided to plod
along their separate,

acceptable paths.
Both were made sluggish
by the weight of
boredom and
frustration. Their

existential crisis remained
bland--never boiled over.
Poignant that both
saw in the other a case
of the dutiful blues.


hans ostrom 2018

No Crisis, No Crescendo

On a night-train to Athens,
I met a woman from Gunnison,
Colorado.  She had blond hair
and seemed self-contained.
I could tell she traveled well.

Together we counted the stops
until the stop we wanted.
There'd been an earthquake.
Greeks out late at night had
much to say, much to smoke.

We walked to her hotel. She
kissed me thanks on my cheek.
Her perspiration smelled
sweetly metallic. I walked to my hotel,
knew no one in the city. An exhausted
desk-clerk looked like she hoped
I wasn't an overbearing American.

I complied. In the cheap room I
wanted to see the woman
from Colorado again and knew
I wouldn't. On with the flow.
These stories that aren't stories
are more important to me than
ones with crises or crescendi.
They are the life.


hans ostrom 2018

He Finds It Very Unsatisfying

He tells me the same fantasy
visits him often, coming around
like a city bus. A woman takes
him in: the main plot. She sorts out
his confusions. Comprehends.

She is bemused. Of course
there is sex. The genre's fantasy,
after all. It's the understanding
occurring before sated lust
that appeals, he claims.

He doesn't need to figure out
what the woman wants. She
tells him what. He's enough
and amuses her.  Triangulations
of pretense and wasted effort

disappear. Her perfume smells
great. So does she. Her sense
of irony, her management
of him and desire, create a
palace of satiety.  She's not

put off by words like satiety.
But it's just a fantasy, he says.
A real bus never comes round.
Where is she? Is she? She reclines
in an oasis. He thirsts.


hans ostrom 2018

So It Goes

The scene's a blue barge
on a green river. Twilight.
Many lights on land: a
society, a world. The illusion

of a fixed place moves
away from me like a barge.
I am a point of view, a wry
observer on a river dock.

Then I am of the darkness
falling. Then I'm the
darkness itself, then
nothing, & I am not.


hans ostrom 2018

Hawks Don't Often Perch That Low

A hawk, bedecked in variegated
brown feathers, had parked on a low,
thick fence post. I walked by on
a muddy road. The hawk ignored

me, also two horses grazing in rain.
What did domestication and the
privileges of an American horse
farm have to do with his carved

beak and mythic talons? Just before
the bird leaned forward, pre-flight,
I squinted to see through rain
and wondered what a hawk's

thought looks like. The gone
hawk left that topic open,
and I went on plodding
down the sodden road.


hans ostrom 2018

At a Reservoir of Inquiry

Warm winter day at
a California university:
this one's origins lie
in agriculture. Between
academic terms, the campus
is deserted. Squirrels

maintain their studious
consumption of acorns
raining from valley oaks
that have mused over
millions of scholars
down the decades.

One squirrel runs
up the steps of the Success
Center, which is closed.
The current campus
populace will flood in
soon, filling the reservoir
of inquiry as feudal
stupidity reigns on the
other side of the continent.



hans ostrom 2018

Dante Alighieri Finds Out Valentina Lodovini Lives on Earth

Dante went to the movies. In the film
he saw,  Valentina Lodovini played
a main role. Even if she had appeared
in just one scene,  Aleghieri
still would have phoned Beatrice
from the lobby afterward to say
he was finally moving on from her.

Dante hadn't met Signora Lodovini
yet, but watching her likeness in motion
for two hours destroyed all his adjectives
concerning beauty and allure.

He wanted to listen to Valentina talk
for a long time, hear her laugh. His
desires didn't stop there, but he reigned
them in out of respect. After all, he
was a Catholic, and as inventor of
Hell Circles, he had a reputation
to uphold. He put it all in God's hands,
as most medieval Italian poets would.

The image of the Lodovinian bright
brown eyes, full of mischief and wisdom,
and of the dark brown hair and rapturous
proportions, all these became Dante's
new mental companions.

It was all too much to bear.  Not really.
He recalled the noble shape of her nose
and her poise as an actor. He wondered
what might make her laugh: perhaps
the sight of an ancient poet in a tunic
going to a 21st century movie? Droll.

There was nothing for it. Dante looked
at his phone.  Beatrice had texted him.
He ignored her. He decided to go home
and to try to find a Valentina Lodovini
film or series on Netflix. He felt sure
that God would understand. God never
ran out of adjectives for beauty and allure.



hans ostrom 2018

Remember, You Know?

To know, remember.
Remember to know.
December and snow:
Remember? September,

remember, is a different
month, and November's
hardly a June. So
long ago. So long, Ago!

Words are diplomats
They mean to know.
All are members
of the Memory Chateau.



hans ostrom 2017

Absent Sister

Sister I never had, I miss you--
rather formally. I know
you would have taught me
important things and listened.

Maybe right over there
in Anti-Matter, you live
and I live; or you live and
I am the brother you never had.



hans ostrom 2017

She Looks Good

She looks good
in a mirror.
She looks good
in a bed.
Looks fine in
a forest,
and alluring
in my head.

She looks splendid
in the Spring,
intriguing in
the rain.
She looks smart
in a debate
and languid
in a lane.

There's an essence
in her presence,
which distracts
and then attracts.
To be drawn
to her is
to travel
past mere facts.


hans ostrom 2017

Of Time and the Prairie

There's a lot of prairie
under all those cities.
It isn't waiting--that's
a sad human thing. It
is, however, prepared--
ready for any histories
that come along to replace
the previous ones.



hans ostrom 2017

So Many Surfaces

He went there for the job.
Stayed there for the duration.
Now his ambition has gone,
migrating one way.

He takes great interest
in what is there, in which
here is embedded:
the surfaces of the world

beyond the body, but also
his mind's interior terrain.
The meaning of what's there,
here, is beyond naming,

The surfaces, the terrain--
they mean what
they are, and from
a certain angle, no more.


hans ostrom 2017

I Am a Native of Earth

You tell me I seem as if
I'm not from Earth. You
tell me I am an alien
and wish to see my documents.
(I have so many documents--
please specify.)

Sadly for you, certain
verified claims of physics
and biology confirm
my native status.

Yes, that's right, you
may infer that we are all,
that they who lived and
shall live are all, Earth Natives.

Our segregations, degradations,
and depravities seem
to spring from a different premise,
one I can see you share--
you with that supreme look
of deranged identity in your eyes.



hans ostrom 2017

Ice Hockey

They are painters on skates,
brushing and dabbing the cold canvas
on which they glide and whirl.

They are sleep-walkers
in colorful pajamas, wandering
on the bright stage of a dream,
everyone else in darkness,
looking on, fascinated.

They are hornets and wasps
in dubious and snarling battle,
released in groups from their
nests, terribly distracted by one
black fly that moves among
them, a dark dot 

playing dead, then jetting off. 

hans ostrom 2017

A You You Can Believe In

"Victor Hugo was a madman
who believed himself to be Victor Hugo,"
said Jean Cocteau, except in French.

Take heed: Cocteau and Vic
showed the way. Dream yourself
up a magnificent, protean you

that has robust self-regard,
if you haven't done so already.
Believe you are

that person. And maybe
my you will see your you
around--in Paris perhaps.



hans ostrom 2017

She Carries Egypt

Today she is the most beautiful one.
Egypt's in her face. What does that
mean? It must mean something.
Faces, bodies, and minds carry
their own history. You knew about that.

Her face says without saying
she carries Egypt--lightly,
calmly, confidently. She doesn't
require boldness, which is for
the nervous. Human, she's not
impervious. Only strong.
And not only strong.



hans ostrom 2017

Read and See

("Aspiration," painted by Aaron Douglas, 1936, oil on canvas, 60" x 60", Fine Arts Museum of
San Francisco)


Black chained hands rise. They have
become the shears of history and cut
through evil. Tilting, layered stars
share a central point that rests
on the right shoulder of a reading,
seeing Black woman. Read and see.

Two Black men stand on an indestructible
foundation. It goes by many names.
Read and see. The men's broad
shoulders defy the past and square
up with the future. Their jaw-lines
assert. One man points through
a spectral sun at pale green towers
and 36 lit windows on a mountain.

The lightning bolt is permanent in purple
skies. It portends the death of White
Supremacy, the Master Depravity.
The men carry necessary tools,
the most necessary of which
are spirit, body, mind. Read
and see. Aspiration is a prophecy.


hans ostrom 2017

A Valediction Forbidding White Supremacy

God damn it, would you just stop?
If you really were inherently superior,
you wouldn't cling to Whiteness like a
street drunk hugging a bottle
of fortified wine.  It's a bit of a tell:
trumpet your Whiteness, admit
you're weak. Here's the thing:

nobody's White. It's just an invention,
like the Hindenburg blimp. Google
Johann Friedrich  Blumenach. Your
fantasy kills people.  Living off hate, as
you do, will kill you, too. It will
weld your arteries shut, not to
mention your mind. Get your DNA
tested. The results will show you're
from Earth like every human who's
ever lived. What a shocker.  Grow up.



hans ostrom 2017

Yawn and Stretch

Yawn and stretch
in the life of the body.
Let the exhausted mind
go off by itself and get caught
in tangled, sanguine vines.

Yawn and stretch.
Savor air, situate yourself in light
or shade. Don't ask why.
Sigh. Focus on a thing nearby,
a souvenir from the infinite universe,
let us say a stone, graffiti,
or a grimy thumb drive.

Yawn and stretch.
Let your mind believe at least
for a moment it can change
the world, that it knows
what the world is. It needs
such fictive encouragement.


hans ostrom 2017

The American Climate

It's easy to think you'll just go
to the sea (e.g.) and ignore the wreckage
wrought by these White Supremacist
huns of the American oligarchy
and its minions who are hypnotized
by vicious religion and depraved hate.

It's easy to give up, as surrender
seems like the most logical next
move, not just the most sensible
emotion. Ritually you'll talk yourself
into caring again, keeping up
childishly with current events,
polishing your opinions,
and doing something small and local.
You'll round up your usual responses.

You know though that what's happening
is hard weather from the only climate
America's ever known. For it's a
fatally flawed culture in which the
powerful flawed exact fatalities
from their customary targets,
and unrelenting on and on it goes.



hans ostrom 2017

A Composed Affair

I recall the affair
as clearly as if
it had happened a long
time ago, which it
did, but not before

starting as an impromptu,
developing into an etude,
going through a prelude
to get to some
energetic nocturnes,
with several scherzos,
rondos, and sarabands
included for good pleasure.

The affair ended
as if by composed
design, how refreshing.
The final note
was held but not
amplified or for long.


hans ostrom 2017

Allegory at Alpine Elevation

You're standing outside in the dark.
In the mountains, alpine elevation.
The cold wind's blowing hard enough
to keep the crust on the snow,
and to blur your vision, so the stars
seem momentarily to reel.

You say a word, any word,
to yourself but out loud. Wind
takes it from your mouth so fast
the word never gets fully formed.
All evidence of your having
spoken vanishes. You recognize

what has happened as the briefest
allegory about ego's status
in the flow of matter. You go
back inside. You're glad for the
warmth. Still the light and things
inside seem trivial and doomed.
You feel embarrassed for them.



hans ostrom 2017

Knowwhere

A bed surrounds itself,
just to be sure. A bookshelf
raises questions and sells them
at the Saturday market. There
are wishes stored in cobblestones.
I have a list. Certain colors
made promises to lightning.
They lied.  Hence thunder.
This is how we talk in Knowwhere.



hans ostrom

The economic reason why tax cuts for the rich are so stupid

Catfish and Koi

There are always women
swimming in the sea somewhere.
To me this is a comforting thought.
Thoughts that comfort us move
into and out of our thinking
calmly, like catfish or koi.
It isn't necessary to catch them.
It is preferable not to.


hans ostrom 2017

Salted Desert

Desolation amidst abundance:
the United States,
permanently warped by white
supremacy, mad with virulent
greed and perverse religion,
addicted to violence, proud
of ignorance. The salted
desert of its soul grows vast.



hans ostrom 2017

Bartok and Stars

"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."  --Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis


In spite of my playing, the piano
produced a simple minuet by Bartok,
which made me think of walking
cautiously across a frozen pond.

An empty coffee cup was sitting
on the bookshelf.  Cool ceramic.
Out there, and "up," night,
are stars, which we think of

as a permanent installation,
not a chaotic map of explosions
or freckles on an infinite face.
I dream recurrently about new

stars, close and bright,
flowing past in a sky-parade
as I look up from a meadow
in mountains and watch,

thrilled and terrified. I almost
forget to breathe. Someone I can't see
says, "Words are stars. I've
told you that before."


hans ostrom 2017

"Well Water," by Randall Jarrell

The Sound-Track Goes with the Screen

They moved me to a different office
again. Nothing personal, although
they must admit I've been an unyielding
piece of grit (I said grit) in the academic
machine. Sometimes a crow

comes to the ledge outside the small
wood-framed window, three brick
stories up. Crows always know
where I am. This one looks like
a private investigator.

The office doesn't have a door.
I put up a three-panel screen
instead.  Film noir. It suggests
I can tell fortunes during office hours.
The other people up here aren't

in my department; rather, I'm
not in theirs.  What is my department?
In this tepid exile, I seem to thrive.
I prepare for class, read, write poems,
eat bananas, look online for art,

music, Oakland Raiders updates,
and arcane information. Lately
I've been listening to the wind's
long moans in the duct system.
The sound track goes with the screen.



hans ostrom 2017

every year another live show

black branch, red
leaves. brown leaves,
green branch. white
branch, gold leaves.
red/brown/gold/orange/
mottled leaves; brown branch.

and an array of variations,
deciduous improvisations.

and dancing down the street,
with ice-shoes on her feet,
comes the woman who
calls herself Winter.



hans ostrom 2017

"Fir," by Henry Dumas

"Omens," by R.S. Thomas

"The Rain," by Robert Creeley

Fulguriators

The Etruscans employed fulguriators--
interpreters of lightning strikes.
Jagged, sizzling bolts wrought phrases,
injected warnings, illumined portents,
and brought the heat.  And may I say,
what a great job: Critic of Lightning.
It fuses meteorology, magic, entertainment,
theology, and serious scholarship.

There had to have been fulguriator
conferences, with newsletters (on
baked tablets) with articles like
"Towards a Theory of Lighting
Semantics," "The Neglected Importance
of Thunder," and "'Don't Sit Under
a Tree': Common Mistakes in
Fulguriation." My own

insights into lightning have been
wanting, focused on risk of wildfire,
fear of electrocution, and thoughts
of B-Horror movies. I know
I can do better, like the Etruscans.



hans ostrom 2017

"Sadie and Maud," by Gwendolyn Brooks

Ubiquitous Opacity

In digitized society, we know
people we don't know, and we
don't know people we do know.

Things are made to seem
as if they're happening.

We're distracted from perceiving
much of what is happening.

In high definition we encounter
ubiquitous opacity.



hans ostrom 2017

"Kneeling," by R.S. Thomas

Borges Before Sleep

A problem or not with reading
Borges in bed before sleep
is that Before Sleep can
go on for decades. If you read
"The Immortal," for instance, you'll
be driven by coach across centuries
into a countryside, where  you'll
enter a baroque mansion that becomes a
labyrinthine museum of statues,
and you'll settle finally in a library
designed by Escher. You will ascend,
descend, and circulate. Plots
will spill out of your mind like tiny
spiders just hatched. The plots
grow and make webs, and you
have to go to work tomorrow,
whenever that might be.



hans ostrom 2017

Stewart Lee - Damned Immigrants

You Whispered

You whispered my name.
My name enjoyed it.

You turned breath
into syllables,

and they rented my ear.
I wouldn't say I'm a fool,

per se (others may). I
would say I'm a specialized

fool working exclusively
for you, and that whisper

of yours has a certain
command of the situation.



hans ostrom 2017

Spare

Spare furnishings. Bare
beams. Spare

has an extra meaning
meaning extra.

How can a spare rib
be a spare

rib when it isn't extra
on any single envoi

of a ribbed species?
Oh, spare me. Spare

me the lecture. Spare
me please, please I

beg you. 8+ billion
of us & no spare Earth.



hans ostrom 2017

Rational Dreamer

"By one estimate, . . . people dream through half their waking hours."
--The Atlantic, October 2017

The mind is smarter than us. It knows
living's a strain, at best. So it wants
to dream, flushing the toxins of perception
from receptors of reality.  It orders
body to sleep.  Even when

body's awake, half the time mind
goes down an alley or into a clearing,
gossips with the past, or drifts
to the edge of the crowd.

Mind is a professional and will
concentrate if necessary. But
the world is dangerous, and many
people in power are insane
and depraved, so mind likes
to keep its distance. It is perhaps
most rational when it's dreaming.


hans ostrom 2017

"Of Robert Frost," by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Absent Lover," translated by A.C. Jordan

"Chess Teachings," by Hans Ostrom

"Thought," by Henry Dumas

"Improvisations: Light and Snow 2," by Conrad Aiken

"Cover Me Over," by Richard Eberhart

Awful Bog

That the U.S. president's speech
has declined into bits of blather,
a handful of flaccid bigoted prods,
and droplets of rancid smarm
sharply summarizes the state
of the nation's health. He is where
he should not be because our sense
and sensibilities continue sunk
in an awful bog.


hans ostrom 2017

"no help for that," by Charles Bukowski

Italian Coffee Pot

Caffeine priest in a silver
cassock. Octagonal alchemist.
Silver bird gargling dark steam.

It is in the pantheon of small,
essential pots that lead us
kindly into our daily labors.

It is the beloved mayor of the
stove. It is a three-part harmony
of form and function.



hans ostrom 2017

About Last Week

The old days--last week: hard not
to yearn for them, their billions
of images and messages from robots
that made them so special.

And that's not to mention
all the official depravities
pursued worldwide. And it's a
piquant era in America.

The noxious gas that fills
the nation's balloon president
leaked out and anointed the hate-
filled land. The White people

in power who can stand
between his madness and
catastrophic destruction did
not, do not.  What a time it was!


hans ostrom 2017

"August 1968," by W.H. Auden

"A Permanent Way," by W.H. Auden

"pull a string, a puppet moves," by Charles Bukowski

Centri-Fugue

Mind's centrifuge spins in self-defense.
Attempts to spare the core from engulfment
by noise   shocks   sales   extortions  hate;
and drowning by social media. Centrifuge

plays a centrifugue, its own idio-
synchronized music, which insulates,
and which also helps mind evade ego,
culture's target.  A not-you seems

to glide in the fugue. Glowing
multi-colored rain falls. "Starwater,"
it's called by locals, although
there is no locality.  The fogged

not-you folds itself into an unbounded
flow of other disengaged personas.
Soon sadly your non-self hears a noise,
recognizes it as name, and everything's

recalled, ego re-established.  The
spinning and its spun music cease.
Your tense sense of the world resumes.
Out of digital Hades comes the flood again.



hans ostrom 2017

"Dreams," by Amy Lowell

"The Winter Pear," by William Allingham

Creature Brains

Creature brains feature
lanes nature grooved
as species moved into
spaces over time with
their accidental
                adaptations.




Hans Ostrom 2017

Phantom Blues

I have the phantom blues.
I'm too tired to be blue.
This is what phantoms do.
They only almost have the blues.

Maybe I'll get some rest
so I can get  depressed.
Yes, that's it. I need to
feel better to feel worse.

Maybe I am a phantom.
I hadn't thought of that.
Just an old weary ghost
with an invisible hat.



Hans Ostrom 2017

Let the Maul Fall

In Fall always
use a splitting maul or an ax,
never a hatchet,
to split cut wood into kindling.

As you split and sweat, don't forget
to find the smell of sap in air.
Find a rhythm to body plus wood
plus chop; and air.
Let the maul fall,
no need to swing it. It's splitting
not chopping, after all.

Would anybody find you
if you walked back into
woods to apologize to trees?
Thoughts like this come from air
as your mind moves away
from the fall of the maul's
heavy head and blade.
Hitting a knot calls your mind back.

Find yourself done with splitting
wood, two boxes of kindling,
let's say. Wood stoves are disappearing,
they must. Culture always
chops away old days, splits
custom, finds other ways to warm itself,
finds other work to get that done.



Hans Ostrom 2017

"To a Lady Playing the Harp," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Att Älska" by Gunnar Ekelöf

"On Inhabiting and Orange," by Josephine Miles

Jambing Jam Jive

Jam of the berries, plums,
and sums of water, sweetness,
concoction. Jamb of a door,

a line, or a vine propelling
itself gradually toward
a window sill: vegetative

will. Jamb of the saying
when English meets French,
leaving you singing

the time-and-place blues
on a bench. Jam of aggression,
reckless and crude, forcing

parts to fit into
what's falsely trued.


hans ostrom 2017

The Vast Hall

Another group has rented
the vast hall here. We must leave.

We didn't know this day would come.
We knew a day would.

Yes, of course I'm confused
and afraid, as if I'd been hollowed

out and panic had been poured in.
I'm also greedy for more time

in this grand space. That's so small
of me.  A door will open,

and a door will close. The simplicity
of it is appalling.



hans ostrom2017

"Everything Passes and Vanishes," by William Allingham

"Hölderlin's Old Age," by Stephen Spender

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"For a Poet," by Countee Cullen

"Dusk in Autumn," by Sara Teasdale

Becausing

because we say because
   we try to know why,
to isolate a correlate,
   shun ones we see
to be against our picture
   frame of the world,
the notion of the world
   itself a frame,
an abstracted concrete
   rain-blur in the brain,
neurologically produced.

                        loosed,
we speculate, and early we
   decide before
we know because we need
   to say because.


hans ostrom

Smug Shadow

When I was young, I didn't take
my shadow for granted much.
I looked for and at it. My preference
was that version roughly
proportional to my body. I felt

ludicrous when I saw the one
where my torso disappeared
and my legs grew to meet
my neck.  I hardly ever look
at my shadow now.  It just

never seemed to develop
into a major innovative
displacement of light. And
honestly, I'm tired of carrying
it around.  At the same time:

no shadow, no me.  It is
a kind of proof. Believe me,
my shadow's quite aware
that it's indispensable to my being.
It's a smug, insubstantial thing.



hans ostrom 2017

The Specials - Racist Friend

"The Owls," by Charles Baudelaire

Anti-social non-media

holds promise. It might look like
sitting alone, phoneless and thinking,
which at least allows you
to imagine a country that has unfriended
racism, faved equity, pinned
knowledge, twanked twaddle
into truth, and stopped following.

As the media are mainly
a village of the damned celebrities,
it may be wise sometimes
to reduce the status of the spectacle
to that of an evening gnat that
passes by your eyes and ears-
a momentary minor whine.



hans ostrom 2017

"Laughter," by Stephen Spender

Monachopsis

You feel you've had
to try to fit
yourself into groups
and systems
like a hand-made part
in mass-produced machinery.

You know other people
must feel this too,
except there seems to be
less friction for
most of them, more
gliding function.

You play at envying
them to pretend
to chastise yourself.

You always think
you can be better
at joining. Yeah,
you think that.

Indeed you've archived
the many instances
of your desire to fit in,
and using "indeed" in
sentences is one of them.

You assemble conscise
internal reports
that tell of irascibility
and insufficiently
feigned adherence
to the contours of authority.

That is, times when
you were a pain in the ass,
when you wouldn't
knuckle under but
could have easily.
Should have? You
ask that now!

Down there in
dark, dank storage,
you feel judged
even by the rude
shelves and weary
boxes of your making.

Don't panic. Go upstairs
where the others are.
Mind your manners
and your mannerisms.

Chat and listen. Note
the desire to be somewhere
else but do not
act on it. The gathering
will dissolve soon
enough/not soon enough:
what's the difference?

The difference is you.



hans ostrom 2017

Party of One

A frost has settled on her smile.
Her words are crisp and cold.
You suspect she never dances,
and that's what you've been told.

You do not want to know her,
although her ways intrigue you.
Your you would not fit hers.
Her disdain would make you blue.

Think of all the times you tried
to get along, accommodate.
They were you've learned a waste of time,
like talking to an iron gate.

Maybe in fact you've lowered
your level of sociability
and must sanguinely admit
alone's good company.


hans ostrom 2017

"The Truly Great," by Stephen Spender

Nymphs

Well, that's a gnarled word. Six consonants
invite tongue, teeth, larynx, lips, and roof
of mouth to a pronunciation party. Awkward!

Now, about those wood nymphs. I've invested
much time-capital in the woods, which
are always a going concern. I earned
a nymph-sighting. You'd think so, anyway.
But, no.  Just squirrels, rattlesnakes, deer . . . .

And then: nymphomaniac. That got flung
around last century. It seemed to have
expressed either male fantasies of a pulp-
fiction kind or pseudo-scientific, puritanical
indictments of women who had sex, if
they did, but that was their business,
so what the hell?  One ministry

of fishing flies goes by the nymph name,
meant to mimic gnats, mosquitoes, and other
tiny hatchers. You unhook the nymph
from the caught trout, and before you release
the fish back into flow, you think you know
what that frowning face suggests:
Is this sport-fishing really necessary?

That's the problem with mythology. Sooner
or later, it disappoints everybody, among others.


hans ostrom 2017

"Love's Philosophy," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Maid Quiet," by William Butler Yeats

The Ballad of Mr. Who

A certain Mr. Who ordered
his where whated--why,
he wouldn't say.

He hired reliable whaters
trained in necessary hows,
which earned them pay.

When all the hows were done,
sad Mr. Who wished he'd kept
the whaters at bay.

Indeed he missed his otherwhere,
which his impatience had reduced
to dust of clay.

Old Who brooded about what-now.
He grew consumed with whys that led
his mind astray.

It will straggle back sometime,
somehow. Meanwhile now, Mr. Who,
he tries to pray.


hans ostrom 2017

A Quality of Cold in September

Cold no longer subtle,
as the shifts started in September
as we finished framing a house.
Hurry, get the roof on.

Cold now in September
as I clear the garden beds,
knocking loose a few last
golden potatoes and carrots
with sunburned indigo shoulders.

It's an insistent chill.  An overture
to a Winter suite. An advance-team
working for an immanent season
that bides its clime in gravitational
patterns.  A shirt under

a flannel work-shirt--then and now--
soaks up sweat & cold startles
the skin when wind rouses itself.
This is a ritual annoyance
that flavors wistful weariness
when I pick up a rake or a shovel.


hans ostrom 2017

"Autumn Twilight," Arthur Symons

"Perfume," by Arthur Symons

Concerning Me and a Concept Called You

Like you I was in space today,
moving around on what some call
Earth.  The Chinese in Mandarin
call it tu, with a diacritic mark
over the u, a parenthesis lying
on its back, looking up at the sky.

Evolution means the weather
can seem calibrated perfectly
to me (and you) and me (and you)
to the weather.  A peace treaty
signed by molecules. Can be
revoked at any time.

After work, I returned
to the circumstance by which
regardless of how much humans
learn, certain fundamental
mysteries will not yield,
such as what's the all about?--
this moving around on a
matter-ball that spins and tilts
and orbits and has an indigestive core
of molten stuff.



hans ostrom 

"Lovesight," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"The Brain is Wider Than the Sky," by Emily Dickinson

The Mother of All Poems

When I think about writing the mother
of all poems that is to say a big serious
poem about my mother, I think about
the poem I wrote, in Karl Shapiro's class,
about how a piano contains all notes,
all potential melodies, etc., in some kind
of ideal way. And after I read it, Shapiro
said to the class, "D.H. Lawrence wrote
a poem about a piano, but it was really
about his mother; he was in love with
her." I found the comment unhelpful,

plus suggestive of incest. Oh, well:
workshops. I also think of my mother
and her low tolerance for nonsense,
such as puppets and murderers.  She
sat on the jury that convicted serial
killer Larry Lord Motherwell (ahem),
which was the name he, Frank
Eugene Caventer, gave himself,
a nom de meurtrier.

Ma wanted to make sure Motherwell
got the gas chamber, and she never forgave
the one juror who prevented that.
Anyway, I really don't feel like writing
an ambitious poem about my mother.
It seems like too much work for too
little gain, and I don't know--
Freud, Shapiro, and millions of
other people have kind of ruined
the subject for me.  My mother liked
to drink Hamm's beer out of the can.


hans ostrom 2017

Crop-Burning, Kansas

Dusk, and we're moving on I-35
through Kansas.  West of us, green
land dissolves into dissolving
available light. Sky flares

at the horizon. East of us,
flames razor yellow patterns
on black, burning undulating
land. In the car talking,

we weave a makeshift fabric
of family lore, wounds and
resentments, hilarities. One
of us glances ahead through

the windshield: rear lights
of cars burn hot and red
like lit cigarette tips.
Green land fades altogether.

Red sky goes pink, goes gray.

Night will arrive before Wichita
does. We're not anywhere very long.




hans ostrom 2017

It's 1954 and Emmett Kelly remembers

the Hartford, Connecticut, circus fire,
1944: the big tent went up,

and people panicked like animals,
but the big cats got strangely calm.

The famous clown rushed from
the small dressing-tent in makeup,

managed more authority than a cop
because a clown's not supposed

to speak, so when he spoke,
the wild eyed customers listened.

They let him save their lives
with a frown.  Back in his tent,

he said to Willie in the mirror,
"No show tonight. No show

in Clown Alley."  Other clowns
entered, hysterical, said who'd lived,

who hadn't. (168 hadn't.)
"You were wonderful," they told Emmett,

who had removed half of Willie's face.
As Kelly he shrugged. "I did what I could."

Now in 1954, Madison Square Garden,
Emmett's put on half of Willie's face.

He feels weary.  He tells an interviewer,
"Clowning is nothing you can study for."



hans ostrom 2017

Transformation: Dementia

He remembers language
but not his memory. He speaks
of what he sees. He scratches
his knees. A straggling memory
wanders by, covered with soot
from a burnt whole life.

To this memory he says hello.
Does not recall why he said
hello. Does not recall that
he said hello. He doesn't
remember scratching his knees.
He speaks. He sees. He listens
to speaking he speaks. It does
not interest him. This does:
An aroma. Of . . .?

He falls asleep in front of
what he sees. Outside of his sleep,
we speak of what we remember
of his memory using some of
the language he used to recall.


hans ostrom 2017

"Into the Strenuous Briefness," by e.e. cummings

"A Long Time Ago: a Dialogue," by Hans Ostrom

"Keen, Fitful Gusts," by John Keats

Crow Travel

Just sitting outside in search of
fresh air, not looking for them:
a couple hundred crows
flying southeast across a chalk sky.

Were they coming from the famous
crow compound and annual banquet
on Whidbey Island?  Hell, I
didn't know.  Crows don't

fly in formation, not like those
fascist geese. In fact, they looked
like they'd been in a weed cafe
in Amsterdam or something--

just kind of flap-sauntering.
They flew in two groups.
Between the intervals, a solitary
crow flew from the same

direction, landed on a tree,
and got loud, as if to say,
"I didn't want to go with y'all
anyway!" Borderline personality.

I don't think it was migration.
More like they were off to
an academic crow conference
or a big wedding. Crows

just look like they have a better
handle on this reality thing.
They're not all out of control
and self-destructive like us.



hans ostrom 2017

"Deep in the Quiet Wood," by James Weldon Johnson