Retired, MF Charles – married, with two cats – reads/writes poetry, gardens, and helps others via community service. Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, he followed a circuitous path through the educational system with various collateral work experiences. Undergraduate degrees in mathematics, biology and chemistry along with employment as a home-delivery milkman, technical work in the pathology department of a teaching hospital and work in a major electronics factory as a solid state development/production technician culminated in a career in education. In academia, teaching mathematics and science, he often illustrated ideas via stories. Spurts and sputters auditing online prose writing courses led by happenstance to a lecture about writing poetry which ended with:  “Poetry – try it.” He found the myriad ways to combine words and cadences to express ideas and emotions was the creatively seductive leap that he was seeking. For him, a poem provides a chance to produce an affect in his reader. That non-corporeal impact, hot or cold, that stirs his reader is his goal.