Month: October 2013

Suitably respectable and never asking for
trouble or the time of day.
I wait at the station
like a cattle dog.

My master gone in the midst of a promise,
tells me I am ready for transit;
my bones wait for flesh
my theatre for Godot.

News on paper says a factory burns.
Expiry dates determine that wafer crumbles in its tin.
Apollo is a god who sends one of his chariots to the moon.

I’m ten years beyond birth already
counting ways to escape the infirmary.

Looking into this forgone conclusion
I peer over my shoulder at a leafless tree.

Will there be leaves on it one day.
Who can say.

I wait.
Like didi.
For what I mean

MChallis © 2000/2014

the talk of heads
that all smile later
the fold of arms
the read news-paper

the bus stop
traffic, agitation
the driver’s late
the conflagration

the number plate
identified
to run a red light
to have even tried

the ticket stub
the validation
the tender fare
the invitation

the glossy smile
anticipation
the magazines
the expectation

relationships that pass
through glances, a
two-second sojourn
that takes no chances

the nameless faceless
careless farewells
the hollow echo of a
concrete stairwells

then finally
the door you seek
to hide behind
till Monday next week

MChallis © 2000/2014

What night-bird sings across the river?
What bear of winter whispers
low and deep in the mouth of the cave?
And who is she who moves toward the many-mouthed artesian,
visible to clouds and stars who live in her reflection?

We stand on our heads
the world turns its duplicity to meet us.
Our imagination ventures
beyond and beyond,
and then rushes back to be with she
who has not yet released us.
She spins her arms in all directions;
our mother, who calls with the night bird and says
“here children you’re safe with me”.

We walk the southern bank of the Ballone.
Before the weir we see the river
mirror to all the world.
The weir-gates reveal her power.
Broken water announces birth
and friendship:
a turbulent opportunity to bright with stars,
to carefully wake the sleeping bear.

Firm in the arms of our mother
(suckling the river of all her children)
brought together,
an unseen strength
low and deep;
and the river with night bird, murmuring
murmuring and potent.

MChallis © 2014

His fixed black eyes,
turned, like a mother’s to her sorrows
eight metres down in a hole
dug for concrete.

His workmates call hoarsely from the rim
but only see and hear
his nothingness

– “he was just here a second ago”

His neck is a broken spirit,
fingernails are torn away
he’d flayed against the earth
falling indefinitely for one and half seconds.

The young concreter,
carefuly finishing his glide work
at the edge of the slab
had stepped back to admire
the reflected perfection of the sky.

His mother receives the news before the slab
is no longer a mirror,
she pictures him falling and
thinks of the last time he called,

– “I only spoke to him yesterday”

MChallis © 2014

On the 4th of September some time ago now
I returned to an empty house,
a wall of anger ran through me and around me

It took a week for that wall to crumble,
standing at the cash register at work
anguish surging up from a deep well way down low.

For hours I sobbed and howled
in the office out back of the store
Evelyn the manager came and went
and when she could – just sat and listened.

3 days later my mother and father arrived
for 2 weeks they stayed
their child, the grown man needed care

mother cleaned all the shelves and cupboards
cleaned all the clothes and ironed all the shirts
father tried to find the answers
and in the end – just sat and listened.

After they went home, the house slowly lost their comfort,
shelves and cupboards returned to slight disorder and
one by one ironed shirts were worn, never again to feel the same.

Hanging in its place I left one shirt untouched,
now and again I would open the wardrobe
to feel my mother in the sleeve.

A decade later we are speaking on the phone
about the children
all of them young men now and mostly independent

you talk about wanting to see them more often
and it being hard to arrange, you tell me about your new man
and how things are working out.

In a moment of candour you speak of the past
confessing
it should probably never have happened.

Who would have thought that in the end
it would be me, who just sat and listened.

MChallis @ 2014