the Northern girl who
is not afraid to wade into the shallow
end of the pond with turtles
fishes ***** and ****

who is she this red haired
laureate who writes unafraid
of spiderwebs adorning her head.

Who is she , tell me true,
is she the lichens of my memory
the moss of my fallen side?

Who may she write of,
when the wolves bay at night
and her silvery visions
overcome me.

To wonder where on beaches or in skies
Lives freedom
Or to contemplate of clouds
The nature of their making
In this
I am moved
To mouth the names of ancestors
To call in song dear kindred, for whose imprints
I sweep the sand
In fragments of faltering dreams
A search for meaning
Where breathes an origin of founding stars


MChallis @ 2015

I your mirror as you are mine
On reflected spiral
We climb
On breaths
On wings
Of light

By light
Most wondrous
Unified
With space between
This connection in simplicity
Of pure intent


MChallis @ 2015

When the sound of life is anything
before the music begins
before there is time to listen; when
a child coughs in the next room

I wake carefully, pressing an ear
to the last beat of a dream,
and find: you're not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

Carriages of wind move past my window
move disturbance above the pool of a tortoise
who periscopes to the surface,
expectant, in the least, for a gulp of air.
I swim and sweat somewhere beneath my bedroom ceiling
somewhere beneath the air I prefer to breath.
But your not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

When children sleep in the afternoon
when grey breezes whisper away the sun,
when an avalanche of crow-call murders the dove
perched on my sill, there is nothing and none to tell
and no circumstance worth repeating at a later time.

You’re not here now.
You’re not in the next room.


MChallis © 1998/2015

From nothingness I fell
into the world of substance,
into the world of becoming:

and became, a toddler, a teenager,
a soldier, a husband, a father,
a professor, an old poet.

Sixty-four orbits of the sun;
over 37 trillion miles so far.
It should feel longer than it does.

Thirty-seven trillion miles of
Reality, Maya, Monkey Mind,
the inevitable, unceasing chatter
we call existence; all the pieces
of this enormous jigsaw puzzle
I have given up try to solve.

You cannot solve life
as if it were just a calculus problem.

Too many variables.

Instead, I try to compose
a kind of music I cannot understand,
only enjoy and share with strangers;

an often futile attempt to harmonize
the discords of living while
getting  a little peek of insight.

Poetry: an attempt to part
the reeds and see what there is
swimming behind the behind,

before the orbits finally end.
   ~mce

As I have stated before, my father, for twenty years was a game warden for what is now known as The Texas Wildlife Commission. He taught my brother and me a lot about hunting, fishing, and tracking, although I never developed a real liking for fish.
I was fourteen years old the first time he took me on a deer hunt near the south end of Texas' Yellowhouse Canyon, not too far outside of Lubbock, Texas. A rancher friend of dad's gave permission to hunt on his two hundred plus acres.
After about two hours of hiking we finally saw one, about one hundred and fifty yards from us.
Oh, how majestic he was, about an eight-point buck. Dad handed me the 30.06 rifle. Sitting on the ground, with my elbows braced against my knees, dad said, "take the shot when you're ready, but if you wait too long, he will run!"
After it was over, and packing the rifle in its case and closing the trunk lid of the car, dad put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Son, you did well!"  I never pulled the trigger. I yelled at that beautiful animal, and he took off as if he were shot out of a cannon.  You see, he posed no threat to me. Looking at him through the sight I realized that all he was wanting to do was survive.
I didn't want, or need, a hat rack.

In memory of "Cecil the Lion."

copyright: richard riddle-July 30, 2015

Look up
Where the sky sets down

See for what
It is and differently

From every view
The same sky

Dark
        Light
                 Lustrous
                               Ambivalent
Spectacular

See all of this
that no one
can



MChallis @ 2015