fingernails blackened from scraping in the moss
a soul of blood, dirt, grit and change,
tendrils of Fibonacci, curving ivy in our jewel-veins
lips that have been bitten and blow among reeds
deep in the forest where our feet touch the riverbed
and our heart thunders like the rain.

My Daughter Near Drowning
  in Lake Michigan
     Seven years old



So cold and still her eyes looked
up at running me.  Glass is like
the water between us.  I am
Christ.  I never felt the wet
and never sank.  I reached
her through the mirror of
myself.

I am her god now.


Caroline Shank

My Daughter Finding Fossils
    Lake Michigan
    (Nine years old)



Early morning beached bones
and million-year-old rocks
whisper, “Little girl?”.
She stops.  The socks she
carries rattle full of rocks.
She hears the one she wants.

She calls, “Mommy, look!”.
She thinks the fossil has smiles
I can see.  Ah, I haven’t seen
fossil smiles since I was nine
and curly and cradling my own
socky bundle by the beach
of little mouths calling to
little girls of fossil dreams,
fossil futures, and stone-hard
fossil love.

Caroline Shank

I write this poem as memory.
The warm night we danced
over the pizza place to "Me and
Mrs. Jones." or the trip to the
museum.  

We were tan and
dressed in white.  Summer
was knocking and we
opened the door.

It was a fine door.  We didn't
know then that the wind from
Canada was coming for us.
We drank as we shared
your jacket.

"Listen" you warned me you
were leaving, calling me to wrap
your fleeing shadow around
the mannequin of July.  "Listen"
pounding in my head.

I write you into poetry 46 years
later.  See, I hold your flame in
my hands. Drops of ash in
a goblet of memory.


Caroline Shank

At what point do I cross over
to the unknown spaces?
Fires carve.  Smoke
marks the places of memory.

"Beyond this point there be
dragons."  

I run to the flat humid
edge of the world.
Under my feet is lava.  
"Is this a dream? "
I ask the lone
sparrow.

"Hurry" he said "Run
before
the wind loosens your
madness."

There is no room to
sit in this desolate
geography.  I am bound
to the edge with laces.

Call the naked lion.
Retrieve for me
the last vestige of sanity.
The remnants of sensation.

I remain alone on the
precipice of thought.
Find me, if you can,
amid the char and
debris of your last

goodbye.  


Caroline Shank

I wait for the cold dark to run
like *** down my chin.

I wait for the sun to round
the side of my building
bringing tomorrow's promise.

It was always to be tomorrow
when I taste your licorice flavored
mouth again.

I wait like the Oracle said,
for the time when the gods
will bring you to my song.

I wait. Coltrane blowing
forever in my heart.  

Forever, the saxophone,
your breath,
in my hair.

I wait for tomorrow. For music.
For wine.  A song to
sing to the empty nights.
I drink to the miles into
darkness…



Caroline Shank