My books live on oak shelves.  They
inhabit my home. Persons of
importance stain the pages.  I take
them into my mind.
I polish even the dust.

Books have worlds waiting
always ready to unfold.
I take princes and romantic
scoundrels, heroes and villains
away to my chair.

I have a green old recliner in
the corner where books find
me. Wanting my lap.

They know the substance and
accident of my self belongs to
them.  Books are like me.
I am a mistake except
here where my books take
me to magic, to the beginning.

Ragged and torn I polish
the furniture of ink
and paper of a thousand
years or more.  

Books are the cause and
effect of my being.

I navigate the act of
reading on my green
ship.  

It is a potent
place.

Caroline Shank

That say if you stand at Michigan and State
in Chicago long enough you will
meet someone you know.
My mother always said that.

Will I meet you there?  Will you
see the eager young woman you
once knew?  You know, the brunette,
thin, full of your blue eyes looking?

I will stand there for all the years
I have left.  I will shield myself
from disappointment, having forty
five years of practice, I wait
like Penelope.  You have only
to sail your ship to my side.

You are a voyage I can't
complete alone.  Raise your
red sails.  I stand on this
corner to save the life I
once threw away.  


Caroline Shank

Relief from covid19. Jeopardy is
better now that Trebek is still
willing with us.  He wears white
wigs and speaks through chemo
sores.  What a guy to stand,
background to our greatest fears.

Women fight the public fight.
******* plop into pans.
******* skin is patched.
Men's breast tissue falls into jars.

There is no change in the drawer
for lost time.
I am not going into mammography
again.   I'm old and pain
yearly is not on my schedule.

My brother died of throat cancer
I think.  He was sick of an old
dream anyway.  Maybe it was
my mother. But I digress

Jeopardy is not relevant to
anything but it serves me well
in my aged isolation.  I'm not
sick of dying.  I am going well
into my old age, into
time future,
and into time past,
which is always now
according to Eliot.

I go into the night half clothed and
remember the words to questions
gone by.

I answer in my sleep,
and I pull my earlobe in homage.


Caroline Shank

We used to spend whole evenings
grinding on your playroom floor.
I learned from you to kiss through
clenched lips, to watch TV over
your shirt stained shoulder. Your
sister, my friend?, Eating popcorn

You left when you were done, me
to make amends to Kathy for the
adolescent floorshow.  To eat
popcorn to stop my stomach
heaving with excitement.  

You told everybody.  I had to walk
through the fog of laughter.
Not even the memory of your
lying words that night
could rub off the smear of
regret.

You showed me deceipt.
I turned my face to the wall,
crumpled and bleeding.

You sent me
to Hell with every

crack of your laugh.



Caroline Shank

I would have written sooner but
I was doing distaff stuff, thinking
of Portia, and getting ready to.go to
the museum of the kind I used
to love as a young woman.

So you see it's been a busy
afternoon.  I can't write
tomorrow because the trees
will be singing in Tolkeins
wartorn back garden. I will
have to endure the casualties.

I'll try to write next week when
the irons of destiny will be
warming up and I can sit for
a minute between the starry
night approaching and listening
to Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

I'm busy these days here
in my cell among the
sunflowers.

Write me back when
you are done planning
my next adventure.
I am, as always, your
own Juliette
of the Spirits.


Caroline Shank

The snow goes away.
You call me out to play Lord.
I feel joy at last.

Temperatures rise,
Spirits dance in the daylight.
You catch me spinning.

Tomorrow gives way
to a dream. A warm balming
wafts my soul about.

You melt my winter
like icicles in the sun.
I run toward spring.


Caroline Shank

Your shade, ma, follows me like a
loaded red wagon .  You are heavy
with the fruit of your youth.
What were you like as a young
girl fresh in the breeze of
morning?

Did you love your mother?  I heard
her singing in her French
voice.  She folded into life in
Milwaukee, spread into death.
She covered you like a
cowl.

You don't cover me.  You are not
allowed. I never cry for you
and that is your naked
sorrow.

I saw you once crying for your
mother.   Are you together now?

Shades rolled over on
the window of my
days and nights.  

Go away  Ma.  
Run for cover from my
poem's imagination.

Caroline Shank