Soon I will die or be dead or
seemingly so.  I will not write
this document nor will I ever
be there for Spring has never

arrived.

You, who spent some time under
the tree with me will be gone,
Cynara.

My thin pages swirl from an open
book   I will not care. You, whom
I have never kissed will close the
hamper.  The lake will never be
the color of afternoons
pressed against us

This beach where once we sought
friends colors will bleach this poem

of ever even you.


Caroline Shank
3.3

Sacrament


Speak to me or don't.  I have heard
your words before.  In silence or in
laughter, suburban sunny spaces
or the city's hidden doorways

with a rush of air
on ******* uncovered
in the rush,
graced only by the statues
purple shadows.

The cautious heaving
from below tells you to be
ready.

Reach for my deepest shadow's
source, mine in me
the whispers of my throat's
taught moan.

Find the sun in my
embrace and in the
strength of my desire
only will we

have  drunk

the sacrament ,

.

Caroline Shank
2.22.22
No

Ilse told of many things:
The noises of the casbah,
ululations from the musky
throats of the wasted women.
Tent smells from a hundred
hookahs.
She had her destiny all wrong.  
It's the same old story.

Cold drinks, a hot town,
thwarted love.  
A kiss is still a kiss.

Bombs mix with the
night sounds.

Louie didn't call off the search.
The suspects lined up

The enemy blurred.

Ilse left.  
Her stillness is forever.
The gin is always cold,
the fedora is slanted
and for the moment
of the last Act:

A kiss goodbye.

Casablanca is in the night's
glare. I hold my glass.

I will always toast to love. .
ft
Goodbye is never
forever.

A kiss is still a kiss.
    
       As time goes by.


Caroline Shank

Soldier


He was perfect at loving me.
He knew the sweet spot.

He walked with me and
He talked with me.

That's a song.  I forget the rest
But i didn't forget him.

He appeared
like A Grace.

He took

A longtime
going away. .  

He left in the
rain.  

I am invisible now,
by your side.

Tomorrow i will write him a letter
and i will Trust.

Tomorrow i will do a lot of things.
Alone i watch him flailing in
the wheat's crease where it

spreads itself on the road.

Love is a sorrow to my
soul.   He is missed
by the flowers we planted.
His memory blossoms,
The pain of this soldier's
retreat opens every night.

Alone

I wear his medals and

rub the shine

of the

gun.



Caroline Shank

They had children and
war planes.  Muster at 0700
Bottles boiled, flannel laundry.
Grandma's coming over.  
Lunch buckets
with a sandwich. No beer.

Blue denim overalls were the fashion
of 1943.  Bandana covered curls.

They were not all Rosie's.

For some dementia was the result
of too much information. They were
brave in their trembling.

Attachment Disorder began
after the war
when the chidren were born.  

Awed at the

thought

that anyone at all
raced through the
day,
propelled
by the memories,  

of the noise of

the bombings.

The dead,

memories.

Toys flung out of cribs.  
They smoked
they tried to read books.

Several times a day the
War was lost, the real
battle, marriage,
and, for the second time,
the front, was drowning,
There was this OnIy stillness
inside.

They dared to muster the
laundry,
to listen to the
broadcasts from
the other room.

Gained
the rank of Rivetter,

they were received with juice,
drank to the dead and to
those who wished they were.

Caroline Shank
2.18.2022



.



.

This is the doctor's waiting room.  
Can you smell the antiseptic mixed
with the cigarettes everyone
smoked when I was a young girl.

The office had a funky smell.
There were lots of magazines and
always the Reader's Digest.
Sometimes I sit alone in the
pine paneled room, waiting..
My mother was never there.
Daddy tried to cope with all the
collosal wastes of time.
He worked hard
in the city. You know about my
mother already.  And the Dr.

The Dr was the only adult who
listened to me for much of my
Youth, it seems to me.
That was because of the Dr. Jane
novels I read over and over.

This catechism of lies
satisfied me. No not the Baltimore.
I know you thought of that
first thing.  This teaching taught
me to not say no to drunken

boys.  It told me this festering
resentment that took hold
of me then was never
a dream.  The poems of
romance and the failure that tried to
drip down my life sap into soil.

This Frustration
always was Magnified by
the mixture of gin and
the lost virginity at 15 to
a backseat ****.

The years have shown the lies
little girls chatechyse.  Except when
I had pneumonia.  

Later he said I was still too
ugly to go to school.  So I went
into the maw of my sixteenth
year.  I cinched my waist of
failures to my secret self.

Then I found out he was wrong.
Somewhat wrong.   I finished
with life at this point and waited for
you to reinstate the proscenium. That
was how I saw it.  Remember
how I cried when they played "the
Lion Sleeps Tonight?   It is the
song of decimation, of the Nihilism
you don't like me arguing with you
all the time.

My life is a tale you don't have
listen to. Careless, incipient,
amniotic dreams of an old
woman you just made love to.



Caroline Shank
2.17.22

Your father will be gone soon.
You will not mourn him until
Rachel refuses your own sorrowing
self.  Time like a water hose
with a short faucet will trick you
into thinking the end is not near.

It's me that needs you.
It is a lonely walk along
long grass.  You played soldiers
on the lawn of your father's gone
to seed everyone trod the clover
and yellow flowers watching you.

You will find the crossroads
to meet again if you leave him now.
His breathing is stress to you, his
failure like chains on a door
.
Take your time
while it still gives off a
fragrance
to memory that
is disbelief.

Go, take your cloak.
I tremble at your nativity.


I am an old woman who
believes in God and
not much else.  
You have turned
pride inside
to rest and think of
tomorrow.  Will you
be still be loved then

My son?

Caroline Shank
2.14.22