The Skipper

on a fishing boat

all day, you feel time
dissolve in water.

offbeat swells shrug
the craft. sun glare
stuns. you sense

the sea's in touch
with forever,
a distant cousin.

headed back to port,
you try to remind
yourself you're you.

gulls shriek, nobody
talks, land magnets
the boat close.

wobbly on a dock,
you again accept
your position: the

skipper of your life.

hans ostrom 2021

© right now      

Hobbies?

When English, just coltish,

was trotting around medieval isles,

a hoby was a small, busy horse

that went nowhere. Ah, then

came the hobbyhorse, a child's

plaything, wicker or wood.

Another horse that went nowhere--

and anywhere in the kid's mind.

Look: we need more hobbies,

as we wait for the revolution

we want or dread. Hobbies 

instead of screeching hateful

things, badgering strangers,

firing guns, or guzzling swill

brewed by cults and hustlers.

Yep, carve wood, stitch lace,

raise ancient cars from the tomb

of rust, brood over chess, thump

guitars or keyboards, water

family trees, horde shoe-horns.

More stuff we do should go 

nowhere like a hoby. There's

nowhere to go anyway. We're

just here, Earth. Keep it tidy,

settle in, find something pleasant

about which to obsess

like that aunt of yours who

lived in a hive of Elvisiana.

In your hobby hide from

your worst self, advertisers,

and those who wish no one well. 

hans ostrom 2021

Sometimes You Meet a Very Good Tree

A palm tree, a bit taller than a person:

thick brown-gray hair covers its

trunk, coarse as a horse's mane,

and bark grows in widely spaced

 pieces that curve up and out

in baroque arcs. The trunk is

narrow at the hips, wide at

the chest--like a torch: and it

flames with green fronds. 

Yes, I'm standing there,

rubbing palm hair between

my fingers, starring up,

smiling. This is a tree 

on a mission to amuse

itself. And me. 

hans ostrom 2021

Velton Stopped Cheering

(revised)

Velton stopped cheering

at football games

and football

matches when he realized

that no one heard him

above the noise

and so a stadium of silence

rose in his mind

a space that applauded

his separateness, his

sense of Velton himself

sitting, standing, in a crowd,

but not of the crowd,

no not of the crowd. 

hans ostrom 2021

Old Man, I'm Talking to You

 [revised a bit]

Old man, I'm talking to you. I am you: 

I didn't used to be, no--I used to fly past

on a train. You'd be sitting on a bench

at the station--gray eyes, gray sweater,

a blur of inert age. And I? Well, I

was all tendon-taut, unfraught, lithe,

and smug with youth. Uncouth. I was

on my way to . . . to here, as

it happened, and it's happened.

I'm sitting, situated at the station now,

too, talking to you, old man. Here

comes the rain. Here comes a train.

hans ostrom 2013/2021

All Electric Poem

This poem used to sound

like a gargling dinosaur,

for it ran on petrol. Now

it's all electric and whirs

like an old cat's throat.

My friend rode with me--

she said, "You know, 

the poetry rush hours

will soon go quiet, will

slither soundlessly along

like traffic pythons."

Home now. I've plugged

in the poem to solar

power. It's sipping electrons,

blithely ignorant of

Daytona, of Monaco. 

hans ostrom 2021

In Heaven (If Heaven)

in heaven (if heaven)

laughter must surely roll

in endless echoing squalls 

when former people speak

of achievements, wealth,

and fame--then catch

themselves, seeing successes

as less than a dissolved

banana peel in a garden 

compost; and giggling with

others and others and others,

everybody foolish and free,

nothing to prove, no one to prove

it to in heaven (if heaven).

hans ostrom 2021

oh memory, oh winter bee

memory seems like a silver
city, a golden continent, a
paisley planet. but if you ventured
to Past, you'd land
in a swamp of minutes,
a humidity of duties,
nettles of the now,
and the who you were then.

my god, memory's a façade,
a sliding presentation to yourself,
the greatest hits and duds.
life is thick as mud, as
tangled as a junkyard,
an all-at-once crammed
into thimbles and shot glasses.

you long to go back sometimes,
a winter bee honeyed with glee
for the buzzing of what was.
you can't go, because and because.

hans ostrom 2021

missed ferry

you missed the ferry. waited

on that loaf-shaped green island,

glum on a soggy slick dock.

I waited on the other dock.
saw then the ferry coming,
a floating cake. here

you came. smiles and a
hug in rain. I thought of
how many humans had met,

will meet like this, down
through wet and dry centuries,
after crossing water, deserts,

mountains... then I crossed
back to the moment, heard how
your voice shaped words,

lit laughter. your laughter.

hans ostrom 2021

many things are happening at once

child sees dog 

on grass, points,

laughs. dog sniffs

air, spongey damp

nose quivers, tail

writhes. crow

lands on branch,

child says "caw,

caw, caw!" crow

eyeballs child. clouds

under blue hurry,

rush, late for something.

cars pass, loud

metal beasts, they

amaze child. father

takes child's hand,

tugs dog with

leash. child laughs.

father smiles. crow

says "caw, caw,

caw!" child laughs. 

hans ostrom 2021

I Say Gray Boulder

(revised a bit)

I say that gray boulder will always be

there, knowing it won't be--but not until

I am no longer. I say it because

I need at least a stone to stay

there, where it sits in my mind,

which needs rock to be more

than memory. Mind wearies of its

memories, its common stock. That

gray boulder's under cedars.

I sat on it, age six, and sank into

the sea of sight, thought,

light, impulse--that sensation all children

know but don't know they will lose.

I say "that gray boulder," and I know.

I say "gray boulder" and I smile.

hans ostrom 2021

Baseball and Relativity

Einstein hated games,

perhaps because the universe

plays for keeps. A curveball

curves and dives only on 

Earth, which functions by

its own attractive rules.

That moment after a hometown

hero (last week a goat, love

is relative) strokes a fastball,

rejecting its trajectory, bottom

of the ninth, lasts for a gasping

forever. An entire childhood

passes, then rises into an adult

roar, crashes into stadium space,

assisted by moons of adrenalin.

Everyone, including physicists,

shuffles out, treading on wrappers,

kernels, and ticket stubs,

heavily held to life again,

to the heroism of just getting

by, glued to illusory Now. 

hans ostrom 2021

The Domestication of Cats

Cats domesticated themselves--how

could it have been otherwise?--ten

thousand years ago. Farming brought

grain, which brought rodents, which

enticed cats out of the forest. Impeccable

feline logic connected such exquisite

dining with the large lumbering 

two-legged beasts who made such noise,

lived in crowds but were lonely,

and couldn't resist two moon-eyes

glowing at them. That cold stare

above a permanent frown and below

radar ears, the subterranean surf

of purring, day-long languor, 

explosive honed rage: all of it

belongs to a calculation that padded

out of timber and brush, sniffed, leered,

hired us, and moved in. 

hans ostrom 2021