Carrot Haiku

 Sweetness of carrots

can come wrapped in a thin shield
  of faint soap-flavor
                        *
  Oh, sunset aflame,
color-cousin of citrus fruit
  & road caution cones
                      *
  Large bits, drillers of
soil. Gaudy green Mardi Gras
  feathers. Round shoulders.
                      *
  Hide is rough, lumpy--
carrots are miners, you know.
  Tips taper to thin string.
                    *
  The smell of nectar
seized from soil, of earned sugar.
  Subtler than parsnips.
                   

Alone

I wasn't alone

when I woke from five hours

of brain surgery. A nurse was there.

My wife, who'd waited all that time,

visited. And monitoring machines

blinked and sighed. I was lucky.

In the cold fog

of painkillers and an assaulted

brain, though, I felt

an aloneness all of us will feel

some time--a rude fact

of our existence. Right now

there are people buried 

under bombed rubble 

who feel absolutely alone.

I vomited regularly

for a whole day, casting

not much but bile into

plastic green bags.

My body thinks anesthesia

poison. (A lucky guess.)

That kept me distracted.

Still: that chill, that

psychic dungeon, that sense

of {you}, a cold infinity

of matter, and nothing else. 

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They Teach Us to Adapt to Them

Crows, those shadow-shouters,

seem to live in towns amongst thick trees.
Out of their twig-walled cottages,
here they come, gliding, flapping,
bouncing, yelling. They're quiet

during almost all their hours,
but their noise makes you forget
that--like a ratchet-voiced hermit
who bickers with imaginary
invaders, scaring hikers. Crows

maneuver us into adapting to them.
So many creatures do. Given
the billions of us, they all have to.

hans ostrom 2023

Knuckles

Splendid that the word

in English should begin with K,
hard like bone. Make a fist.

There they are, those knobs
in a slanting line, fingers
bolted to them. Make a list

of all the species they knew
before they went to work
for us. People put rings

on fingers, shape and paint
nails, read palms, shake
hands, caress with soft

finger-pads. They might
even tattoo something
sinister near the knuckles,

which no matter what keep
working shifts in the grip
factory, uncelebrated, scraped.

Rub the knuckles of one
hand with the other hand's
fingers: a gesture of thanks.

hans ostrom 2023

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