selections from "Seed Upon the Wilderness", pub 1963

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Gomerals and Geniuses

Under prudent elms
Arching the heterodox schemes
of gomerals and geniuses
In whose heads the lanterns
Of conscience burned
Lighting fevered architects
Carving towering monuments
In jaundiced forests
These priests and prophets
Lined the shelves
And minds of contry folk
With imported wisdom.

Edwards, with grim logic
Flailed the wills
Of men and spiders.
Gentle Concord watched
The ancient, self-appointed oracle
Harness dreams to stars
While but a league away
Mirrored by Walden
Disobedient Thoreau
Detched from wicked Concord
Pursued more private society.

The Ripley's, at Boston'd edge,
Spread utopian wings
From which Miss Fuller,
Preferring the taste
Of Boston brewed rebellions
To that of strawberries, fled.
While to the west another maid
Prim as the complacent flowers
Saturating her garden
Stumbled on a universe
Where roses guested thorns
And life was death's thin veil.

Gone are gomerals and geniuses
Carried in stark, shaven coffins
Prudently carved from elms
To the sod-crowned kingdom
Where brazen wind whistles
Through nameless, granite teeth.

From her recording window
Miss Emily witnessed
The anxious procession
Of the seasons
The strange and cruel mockery
Of cradling sod.

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Thoreau On Graduation
From Harvard

The ladies of his household said
To young Thoreau
Home from Harvard
Degree decreed
"You must go out and seek your fortune."

Young Henry David
Home from harvard
Artful bachelor
Dropped well chosen tears
Susceptible to tears the ladies cried:
"Oh, not right away."

So young David
come from Cambridge
Full of learning
Harvard baked
Stayed at home
And sought his fortune there.

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The View from Mount Katahdin

A matter of perspective
Of line, cof coulor
Altering the focus of ears
The brows of mountains offering
Opinions different from their feet.

From the lip of stout Katahdin
Flaunting its hoary majesty
Over minds and unsuspecting villages
Thoreau, one tepid August
Dined with his thoughts
And with the ancients
Whose lessons read that
Mountains conquer men
That the gods for good reason
Reside at angles forbidden
To human geometry
And shout to sandalled Moseses
To drop their rules and compasses.

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Thoreau

He lived in many worlds

But tackled one.

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The Ladies of Louisburg Square

I followed in the dark train
Of Christ's brides
Along Mt. Vernon to the ovaled square
pursued these phantoms
Of brick and cobblestone.

Surveying this uncloistered orb
They entered ordered walls
To bake His bread
And taste His joy.

I stood with strange companions
Christopher, Aristides
In the unruffled gloom
On my own pedestal
Sharing hard smiles
And tasting, too.

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©1963 - 2005 Walter Lincoln Howard, Jr.