I will kiss you last before
I shuffle off, though you
will not know it.
I write your name
with a cloud's bent rod.

You will not know me,
old and fat, but I
owe you an engraved
allegiance.

You left in the rain.  And I,
I ran home to bare my
pain on the palm side of
tomorrow.  Always you,
young and warm. Still
my old heart beats
with your

goodbye.


Caroline Shank
11.1.20

I am almost 74.  I sigh as I type
that out.  I remember the first 45rpm record I ever bought.
Sonny James. "Young Love."
I played it for forever on the
old record player we had in the
basement. $.79

The sunshine of those first
moments of fiscal liberty
burned into my mind.  
It is a fleeting moment
still turning, singing
"they say for every boy and
girl"...

We all whirl in the dirndl
of time. The dances were
named then.  The slow songs
my favorite.  I have no idea
if people dance now.  What
Blue Skies and Wine and
Roses are there today to
weave the time.  

I live in a Lonesome Town,
with a dwindling number of
friends.  The only thing left
of the lovers who slow-danced
me are the grooves across
the face of a long life lived

across a jukebox of illusion.


Caroline Shank

Can anyone help me? Is
there a minute particle of
a sympathetic soul in the
residue of a life loudly
lived?

I don't really have a
syllable of rain to tell
of the need of personal
experience.

Someone run to me with
an outstretched hand
that I may not flail
in the cold.

God knows of my need
and He cries at your
indifference.

Go away from me, I will
struggle to keep from
showing you my unrequited
solitude.

I am called The City of
New Orleans.



Caroline Shank

Now you are there where
the time turns out to be a
mixture of fear and joy.  
You live between the lines
and spaces of my mind.

We root for all the people
left on the battlefields
of this ****** war
on which we will either
sacrifice or lose to make
the last days of memory
and the dance of the day
our hymn to the silent
future.

We suffer, you and I, the
days of darkness and
strange things that are
coming at us like leaves
twisting off the trees.  We
arrange ourselves between
the dates that crawl from
the calendars. You say
we are going to get, in
the last days of autumn,
the first rays of Spring.

When I Think of you
I pray.

Caroline Shank

Strange fruit lives in the
bones of black mothers,

the blood of their sons,
marrow of their daughters.

Blue winds drift by
full of poplar scents,

aromas that never leave
the maternal soul.

They exhort their sons
to be careful,

be safe,  
make it back home.
  
They know they can die
for the smallest things,
for absolutely nothing.

Yet, they also know the American Dream
through the body of their sons
they hold closely in their arms.

They watch them leave,
hoping they experience

just ordinary prejudice and
not a blue knee on their neck,

that sculpts
them both
into a black pieta

Note:  

Strange Fruit refers to the song about lynching made popular by both Nina Simone and Billie Holiday.  Here are the lyrics:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to ****
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

I watch my love,
almost a mermaid,
standing in the kiss
of shoreline and ocean,
washing sand from
her glistening form.

In the pause
between tides
I tie a hope line,
strong as
my inglorious life,
to her toe.

She swims through it,
hardly noticing my intent,
only her friends
crowding around,
reflecting her noise.

Shadows pass her face,
gravely drip
down her body
as her rising beauty
drifts away from me
and the setting sun.