.

I cannot rival your blue eyes
Or the whirling
winds of your infinite skies.  

Windworn leaves tumble at
your step.  Winter turns to
summer where you are.

Walk to me slowly that I may
savor the trail you leave on
your way to my page.

I write you into time.  I hear
the bells ripple.
I have seen you travel in dreams.  

You leave me always wanting
you more than there is air above
me or ground below.

Stay where I am for now.
Use me with love.
Your song.

Caroline Shank
11.19.1 9

The wind is cold, the night is long.
I never sleep.  You are gone.
Swirls of pain
surround me and I leave my
body behind.

I cling to the fastness of thought,
somersault through millennia
to witness you through the
blinkless eye of light.

Time is an illusion.  We met
in the unformed moment of
creation, chased each other
around the universe.  A
cosmology of wonder.

Now, at the last,  
moments of my life
collapse down  
death like ivy on
winter bricks.

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
10.27.19

It's when the tears dry up,
when the arms are no longer
feeling the loss, when unkissed
the days end that sorrow becomes
memory only and the flat back
of yesterday loses color.

Try harder to replace the moments
strangely forgotten, to remember
the trust, to relive.  Wrapped in memories that once slayed
the dragons of doubt only to
find the pieces of a life unloved
after all in simple shards incapable
of stinging that the ends of
believing are achieved.

This ceases to be a cause for
fear, this lost labor at last
unexpected but tired with
unstrain and blurred with
yesterday's tears.

To lose is always a shock.
To cease to be moved
is a thud in the soul of time.


Caroline Shank

There is in the wind a name
so strong, so implacable as
to pass through the strongest
resistance.

There are in the sky arms so
warm they capture the prayers
of everyone.  The nuances of
language are known as a
thought blown to Heaven.

There is a star for each person
that outshines even the brightest
glow.  

Stars are born on the cusp of
love.  There is the whirl and twirl
of cosmic dust which brings
names to things.  

Your name was sprinkled on me
before the beginning of
the bang from which cosmic
destiny emerged.

It is only through the dancing
of dust that we find
each other covered in the
molecules from which
we are all born.  Through
which we will incarnate
together forever.

It is the cosmic dance, said
Maude, that "there are all
kinds of observable differences"
which makes every moment
ineffably perfect. Every encounter
unique.  We are all there ever
was or will be.  A swirl of magic
wrapped around us.  

We are all borne on the breeze.

Caroline Shank

(I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
No wait that's been used.
I always knew someday you'd walk through my door… no not that either.)

I walk downtown and there
you are.  I watch your long
unseen smile catch you
unaware when you see me.

There are fragments of that
smile in the shop window.
You reach to catch
my hand.

My memory flickers with the
walklight.  Four seconds to
caution.  Three, two, 1, I run
slowly to your waiting arms.

I float, no wait, I glide to
the other side of the street.
Trust is flung aside, the
movement of air on my face
brushes the air on your
face through the sunlit
afternoon.  

I am a ripened Autumn leaf.  
I slide into the present
moment aware at last
I am a dreamer in a blue
lawn chair.

Caroline Shank

In this circus of the mind,
you are the dreamraker, the
seller by the booth of riches.
You are the daylight’s yellows
and the blue stratum of sleep.
We knew each other in the
shadowless angle of noon,
bartered minutes, collected
seaside the shells of
poetry.  You opened the door of
tents.  The edges of the sand’s
various galleries collapsed
into rivers, opened into books.
You are the sheik of araby, the
dream-maker, the purples
mornings brush in the eyes
of wise men.

Dreams surrounded the day’s
median.  Time was, red was the
color of afternoons pressed
against us.  Now the tents
move nearer the water than
you.  The past is covered
canvas, the future is the wet
unbroken fabric of beach.

The bazaar closes, tents fold,
pictures painted on the moon’s
memory move on.  You and I
walk to the uncut littoral,
carve footprints in the cool
green silence, the first morning
of the world.

Caroline Shank