It all happens between the cracks.
My life to be cliche.  Light barely
flickers between the shift lines
in the cracked ground.

I worked nights for many years
in a hospital of sunless windows.
I slept badly and spent summers
lying on the mostly deserted
strip of lake Michigan beach.

A suburban by choice, I felt no
real need for company.  Still
don't.  There is always the chance
of a thought misunderstood, a
glance mislaid on the face
of someone outside.  

Lives that are sunlit and brave
always try to haul me out and
unfold my wrinkled insistence.
I wear the pale gleam of darkened
hallways into old age.

I am, by choice, a crone of
undistinguished personality.
A poet peeking out between
the veins of life.  

I am chosen to, occasionally,
shine a little light from under
the sidewalk.


Caroline Shank

The sound of the tenor notes
culled by the expert plying music,
swiping keys and sweat from
the essential melody of the
saxaphone sends me into
the world of the sensual.

I breathe shallowly.  Sigh in
the tender way of notes
brushed against my skin.

I sit in the smoky club as if
alone in my secret self.
Smoke trails from my mouth

as he makes contact.  
The player sees me and
knows my helplessness
as he swings toward me
trailing the sound of his
sax across my waiting lips.

Caroline Shank

The Image of the Old Lady


The image of the old lady
in the saggy coat walking down
the beach won't leave me.

I see her grey haired bun
hovering over the collar
of her tattered coat. The
sand splits in her footsteps.

The gulls holler and swoop.
She doesn't notice.
She thinks he will return
to her here on the sand
where they first made love

forty years ago.  She sees
his red hair coated with sand.
Her tan hands sketch his face
forever in her memory.

She walks with a slow lope,
her brown stockings in
disarray, shoes filled up
with the miles she
travelled in those years
of her husband and kids.

This is her time alone to
pray to God to love him
her love.

Caroline Shank

I slow danced in the living room to the
memories that were even in the 60’s,
old.  

I would stack the spindle with several picks
from my library of “crooners”  Andy, Jerry,
Jack, so many memories.  Listening to the
music of the 50’s would sop my mind soggy..
Johnny Cash walked the line all over me.

I drank the music
of my youth like warm milk.  Time was
I danced to the sounds of American
Bandstand, everyday after school.

The race was on to get home to turn
on the television and watch as ****
Clark and Justine or one of the
Regulars would rate the music that
had just come on the airwaves.

“It's got a good beat and you can
dance to it.”

33 ⅓ records, 45 rpm’s would stack
up on our playroom record player.

My Dad put headphones on my
radio in an attempt to find peace
from the horrible, to my parents,
sounds of the likes of Elvis.

It was the 1950’s and all of
it was so new.  The era of the
Teenager was born.

We had our own money from
lawns and babysitting and could
buy the song and songbooks,
The clothes and cigarettes we
consumed like soda shop
malts and and nickel cokes.

You may not know of these things
you who are the children of the
80’s but we started it all.  

We strolled and twisted before
our freaked out parents.

Now I can still do the dances
But it’s more like a crooked
back and shuffled foot.

But I remember you,
Makeout parties and
Sloe gin in my coke.

I remember being kissed in the
backseat of your car.
so drunk with beer and music.

I remember the long play albums
That are just now coming back
into the stores.  Oh! How I wish
I had my Bob Dylan “Freewheelin’”
album.

I gave them all away when cd’s
took  the sound of the
needle as it ripped across the
grooves of my youth.

It was the best of times.

The worst of times
came later..
.

Caroline Shank
2.17.20

the Queen and the Prince
married in splendor regaled,
the long autumn begins.

You join me.  I am the receiving
slot to your philosophy.  We talked
for years.  You pushed the
red and yellow of your crazy
mind into me.  I was

the join to your metaphor.
You were the tendon which
completed the fit.

Now, lumber on the barn
floor I am martyred.

I tried to love you, my soul
inhaling your every thought.
You unearthed the grain of
my waiting mind.

You finished the fence post
of our friendship and moved
to Cincinnati.  I fell over,
A tear in the fabric of
magic.

Caroline Shank

Five powerful privet hedges formed
a fence in our front yard in New York.
My mother planted them for some
reason, known only to her.

The branches grew sparse and suffered.
Failure to thrive.  Knee high to my
twelve year old body, it never bloomed
in that yard of green weeds and dandelions.

It was meant to keep the
dogs away.  We had feral cats
in the yard.  My brother and I
were feral.  My mother bred us
into the wind of 1940's Chicago.

So that was that for her.  She
retreated into madness from
Chicago to New York to
South Bend.

Fences, like my mother's
addictions, are not always seen.
They crawl up your leg like
flakes of hate.  They keep growing
until your eyes are holes in the
twigs.

A fence so thick you think
only prayers will let you out.
Easter Sunday blooms in
the trailers and filaments.

No relief.  They scratch
on your so small soul.  White
privet petals crawl into crevice
and crease.  

I no longer itch but
tic with the rhythm
of the seasons.


Caroline Shank