It is not love that breaks your heart,
Craig, it's the blankness rubbed
against sunlight on the window,
when the smear appears.  

Or not that but it is the redaction
of a life organized around
a thought ordained. I keep
telling you, the evidence doesn't lie.
It was planned and signed,
that there was no future at all.

"Go" , you say, "you can do this"

But it's the mask I never saw you see,  
it's the slice of the night's
warm wind which once
caressed me that now leaves me alone,
the darkness between
breaths bewildered
by his speech.

It's not love that breaks your
heart, it's the scream
in the ephemeral

moment




Caroline Shank

My thoughts morph into
the stuff of a Summer
afternoon:

A long time ago, before
I grew white tendrils of age in my hair, and that still lone Gardenia softened our song,  you played with me in the sand. We opened up hidden evenings and my only thought
was to be touched by you.

Your rough skin was pocked with Marijuana seeds and the twigs of collaboration.  Sky-high and pinked our conversation was in your cupped hands on my soft walls.

Is it any wonder
that I loved your song?

Now I am stuccoed and old and it is in my heart alone that this explication of a memory
remains alive
in the

crevasses.


Caroline Shank
6.10.21

The clock no longer chimes.
The dinner bell no longer rings.
These sounds on which I so
depend
have
gone.

Your place is in the grave
with flowe#sș00rs down u ND er
A ND unanswered prayers¢.


Caroline Shank

Long days.  Night slithers through
the door and I reach for you.
I believe in the wisp of
twilight, the smell of dope
and your arm around my
shoulder. The cross we bear.

The map of night is written
and I must go.  Never, the
tears.  I stare at your mouth.
We kiss the chalice of each
others love.  The mass of
yesterday sanctified a long
litany of love unanswered.

I hate the sound of the bells.  
I am brought to my knees. An old woman genuflects, A tear falls.
I confess my sins but never
you.  

You, you belong to the
dusking dreams.  

Caroline Shank

Sometimes I see you dancing.
Your arms are strong and hold
me up.  I would have
fallen without you, tumbled down
like a doll flung away.

Sometimes I see your strong
walk. You were my bear in the
warm summer of my 27th year.

You are still playing
music in my old age.

Sometimes I see you
dancing
in the night,
in the rain.

Our
song,

floats away

like smoke

in the air that

I breathe.




Caroline Shank

The crepe paper days of late June,all of them, the Summer of 74, are on
a spinning boat  in my old imagination. I have ridden the warm
days and lingered over a shared
joint by the light of a satin moon
for so long now I no longer shake
myself to be sure you haven't
gone, like a stone on the lake's shore,
which, when washed up on the moraine, dangles in a wave and is
gone again.  As with you

on a raining night, running for
someplace to hide.  Death almost
did part us.  As the marriage
of two souls, destroyed, died.

Lest you ever learn of my long, lingering, pain, know how I loved you
old as when we were young and
ragged with the raw edges of an
impossible dream. But you
left me and in the undoing of myself
I woke alone from the sting
of unbelief.

Sorrow does not preclude death,
but it is in the years of grief, searching for a way across the long embattled
memories,

that we die.



Caroline Shank

Are you sleeping up there in
the stone parapet in which
you spend your time writting
letters and showing how you
can trip the light fantastic

with no one watching. You,
where you retreat to listen
to music. To read your books
and with wine dream,
like Miniver Cheevy, of the
days of roses.

Do you think of me? My
perfume you were so fond
of.  Oh, how I adored you!

I am not allowed to climb
the steps to your so private
sanctuary.  The locked door
reminds me of your pledge
to God to leave me and the
child.  

We are not yours, not anymore.
You with your hunched shoulders
crying "That is not all, that is
not it at all."

Your dead heroes replace me.
I should have gone away before
I knew you loved me.  But how
could I?  I will tomorrow shows
me a new place to hide away

Think of me when you are
inside with your plans and dreams.,
and I am on the outside scrolling
across the long years in which
I am stranded

in.


Caroline Shank