I’d never mark my stamp on you
even if I thought I could
and with lessons drawn
from father’s “tool and die, ”
I know I’ll never try.

That stamping press Dad used
left only negative impressions,
crushed in carbide steel,
to mark the owner’s brand.

No, I’ll have none of that
I need your free undented souls
To sing both “I” and “we”
in mystic synchronicity:
drawing life from the speckled pages.

But like my father at his lathe,
I’ll ply my studied craft
and bid you do the same with yours
so that you and I
can find our truths among the spots
and, with mysterious synchronicity,
breathe radiant, illimitable life
into the freckled, speckled pages.

*June, 2009

What sort of lean-to
is habitat to your humanity?

Is it an apartment, bungalow, flat ,
or a cozy cape cod
or perhaps a suburban ranch?

What sort of lean-to
provides those inches and flames
that shield you from
hypothermia and death?

Is it a Georgian Mansion by the sea
or cardboard boxes stacked
beneath the interchange
on the far side of town?
(How many lack even that)?

What sort of lean-to's
will suffice
to shelter the family of man?

*December, 2013

Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to slake its upward ******.

A single heedless step is enough
to breech that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless soul
who fails to guard his steps.

Fragile calderas also roil
buried in dark crevices of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in fiery pools
of self-consuming misery.

To dress and salve our wounded souls
we plant fertile gardens of reconciliation
with beauty, trust and charity
and kneel to gods of grace and solace.

But a despot’s practiced eye
knows how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot,
and reason has no district.

Friends and siblings - my flesh and kin,
this world is ours to lose or save
so let us seal well our Sacred Calderas
from bitter foes that stalk us from within.

July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard

intermission with the UMSL Orchestra

The backstage hall was wall-to-wall smiles.
Just moments before,
Barbara Harbach had charged the stage
after we premiered her joyous *Jubilee Symphony
screaming at them all the way,
"That was spectacular"!

The Arianna Quartet's Kurt and Joanna
stormed down the steps
spewing out pieces of their minds
in no uncertain terms
"excellent" - "great job" - "beautiful".

I preferred to hang out on the edge
wrapped in the silken echoes
of Tchaikovsky's Andante cantabile
(so eloquently sung by our youthful strings).

Intermission was up and it was
back to work time.

In the abyss of despair
over his dying ears,
Beethoven flooded the world
with the blazing sunglow
of his prophetic second symphony
and it was now up to us
to pass on the word.

Just call me,
"Grateful (underscore) 1".