The Milky Way was really quite enough
to trim me down to size
but even so I thought it fine
to spread a quilt beneath the stars
and mark my spot
beside the universal edge.

But then those ****** astronomers
had to rewrite the universe
with stellar maps and Hubble pics
that proved beyond the pale
that those fuzzy little nebulae
are really other galaxies.

Hold enough, I say. That’s most unfair!
Who needs another million Milky Ways?

Well, if that's the way it has to be,
then I'll just fold my blanket up
and go inside.
where I'm ever so much bigger!

August, 2008
Robert Charles Howard

Light bulbs are redundant
When Kayla walks in -
bathing every person and surface
with the flood lamps of her smile.

She smiles when she dances
and smiles when she sings
while two grateful women
who precede her in lineage
draw their bows across the strings.

None would ever suspect
that this fountain of joy
had once wanly trembled
in the valley of shadows.

Yet no matter how vilely
leukemia fought and clawed
to claim her for its own
it never really stood a chance

for Kayla had steps to dance
and songs to sing
and millions of smiles to smile
and would not be denied.

February, 2008
Robert Charles Howard

Over untallied millennia,
    roiling Gunnison waters
sliced through southern Colorado
    schist and gneiss like a sabre -
carving tower walls of black rock
    ribboned with tableaus of
pegmatite and mica flakes
    flickering in the mid-day sun.

2,000 feet below, meandering
    through its stark canyon walls
like some legendary serpent,
    the Gunnison murmurs softly -
resting on its laurels.

Robert Charles Howard
September 2019

for Onorio Zaralli

Wherever we look, my friend,

we see children at play.
and children in school .
     We see children in triumph
     and children at risk.
  
We see mothers at work
or lost in thought.
     We see mothers on the edge -
     survivors striving for a rainbow.

We see aged ones,
proud of their grand-kin's deeds
      and of marks they have etched
      on the universal ledger.
      
We are our forefathers and sons,
granddaughters and mothers,
     foraging our way through chaos -
     searching for the best map home.

So we hone our skills
and practice our trades
     to harvest our daily portions
     and navigate the tides of time.

Whoever we are today,
wherever we might wander.
      we are our only hope for a better day
      the only “us” we can cherish.

Lost in dreams, my eyes gently close
hoping for a well-marked path to follow
     paved with respect, compassion and justice
     where we may all walk together in harmony.

© 2019 by Robert Charles Howard

"Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts." - Organizational Behaviour (2008)


Hope takes breath when kindred tempers
     cast off qualms and hubris
to unite in harmonic synergy -
     pledging always more and never less
than each could dream alone.

Lewis and Clark together
    eclipsed the gifts of either man.
Marie and Pierre Curie were
    married to science and life
as they were to one another.

As dynamic as two conjoined streams,
     driving toward the distant sea,
minds in concord free the channel clogs
    that masquerade reality.

But what of us, cast adrift
     in this inscrutable world?
It all comes down to
     who we are together
and how we fasten life to truth.

© 2019 by Robert Charles Howard

Morning Rainbow

Myriad prismatic crystals,
     refract the morning sun-streams -
painting layers of spectral arches
     across the misted horizon.

Eyes turned to the western skies,
     we suspend our meteorological selves  
acquiescing to miracles unveiled before us -
     un-beckoned and scarcely earned,
proffering thanks for the radiant epistle
     of healing, hope and promise,
artfully encoded in transfigured light.

Synthetic Refractions

A luminary ballet takes center stage
    when synthetic refractors come to play:
crystal pendants bathe our foyers
      with dazzling swaths of color.
Hazy coronas encircle streetlamps
      discovered by headlights through the fog.
A science class prism slices light rays
     into pre-ordered spectral strata.

If the sky denies us a rainbow,
     we can always fashion one of our own
and we do!



Spectral Sound

Before there was music,
     bird songs brushed our souls
and the murmur of woodland streams
     held us captive by their banks.

Soon we learned to sing and tint the air
    With prisms of wood and wire and metal
and to color soundscapes in our spirits
     With songs of wonder, joy and longing.

Before there was music,
     bird songs brushed our souls.

Robert Charles Howard, 2019

A lost and thirsty wanderer
          sought oasis on a parched and dusty plain
                   where spectral mesas
                merged with pastel stratus clouds -
            quivering in the summer sun.

                    A slender blue ellipse emerged
                            along the horizon's edge,
                          taunting the traveler’s arid throat.

                    Recalling child-day afternoons.
                         splashing in the pond behind the barn,
                              his legs urged toward aquatic deliverance.

                                       But knowledge seized his boots.
                                   Wary of loving a delusion,
                               he chose instead to seek a road or farm
                           or chance upon a horse-backed rancher
                                tracking down an errant calf.

                                       Still he looked back to his phantom pond  –
                                             never to know if an oasis flowed
                                                   less than an hour’s walk away.


                               December, 2018