The fires are determined to rub
out the names.  The paths of
thousands of years.  Gone.
The Great Aboriginal voices
are spread thickly through the
ash.

Tomorrow is irrelevant.  The
peace pipes are gone.  The fires
littered.   The White faces cross
California.  The scores are
zero.  The scorched ground
bereft.  

There is a song sung in sadness
among the stumps of sacred trees.
There is a wail from the White
souls.  The Indian sorrows whisper
sympathetically.  

Alone in the smoke.  Our
children dare to rebuild.  Hand
in hand the Ancestors applaud.

Caroline Shank

The cinders under my bare feet
jabbed me in my hurry to the
beach.  The path down from
the street to Silver Lake was
short but painful.  I rushed
running to the shore.

I learned to swim from a wonderful
lifeguard.  From 1st to 2nd to 3rd
rock I spent the summer of my 10th year swimming in the freezing
spring fed lake.

I swam flat out like a fish.  
I listened for his whistle under
water.  Come up,  he summoned me to the top.  I shimmered like a
shook trout in my rainbow eagerness.

I was a pebble unknowing
that my fate washed me up on
the shore
the day I felt the first young
flung feelings of love.

I shot through the ends of
latency like a star.
I never felt it ringing.



Caroline Shank

I studied a little mythology, some Jung, a tad Freud.  I've read Durrell and Robertson Davies among other things.  I am in tangles over
myself.

My Id  is full of archetypes.  My
Ego is aware of my upside down
Superego.  My parents were
Very ******* up. It's no wonder
I lick my fingers before I eat
the soup.  It's the Golden Bowl
thing.  I think that's it.

I am populated with fantasies.
I can fly around the sun w/o
melting, visit Grandma and slay
dragons before lunch.

I save my children from the
Gorgons around them and
clean their faces when they
are done.  It's a hero thing.

I can ****** Poseidon when I
feel like it but that ****** trident
undoes me everytime.

I was your Anima when I was
younger now I am your crone.
I could never get Siggy to
realize that.  It was in a coke
cookie moment I gave my
soul to Shakespeare and
died old and unrepent.

It is in mythology that
you love me. Only me
and Forever.

I am Everywoman.


Caroline Shank

Tomorrow creeps, no wait the
Bard already used that line.
Let me say that tomorrow slings
it's way into me. It's like an
arrow from the Promised Land.
Tomorrow whips across me. I
wipe the sweat of it with
a damp hand.

Panic wets me like rain.  It
waits for tomorrow which,
collides with today and my
fists ball in terror.  Sleep
never soothes this breast,
it barely makes it in the front
door.

I breathe deeply, or try to.
What will help is greatly
misunderstood.  A prescription
for today to stop tomorrow.
Which will slam me to the
floor anyway.

I shake myself awake.  

It is always today.
I stumble on.

Caroline Shank

Everyday I look for you.
You navigate me.  

What I am
afraid of is simple.
Will you notice me in the
millennia since then?
Will the white hair
camouflage me?

It's better if I stop looking
for your red curls
along the sidewalks
of my past.

I am going to go to the
god of past bells to stop
the ringing of your name.
I will have no luck there
but I will try to get to
tomorrow without you.

You warm me, like those
summer steps in the rain.

Caroline Shank

(A portrait of a Lady
brushed across time.
A fragment of life one
afternoon in a poem.)

She drops through your
memory like music from
a farther room.  Her death
is filtered.  Colors
are flowers on the grass.

You are a prism or a vessel.
You come and go.
Time goes into stone.
Pain is a fossil.  It will
be here a billion years.


Caroline Shank

We met in the early days of the planet.
I remember the radical color of your
amber hair.  There were curls there
that only the gods made.

I remember you.  I loved the simple
act of breathing your name.  Prehistory
awakened in me the sovereign blessing
of your inimitable love.

I remember you, do you remember me?
Someday you will be here again and
we will know the depth of the night,
the height of the day and the
remembered purr of our bodies.

I wait here on the divan of day.
You will breathe my air again.

I wait.


Caroline Shank