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Caroline Shank Aug 2022
The Story

Hey Wall.
Are you there
to hold me up when
old age conquers tomorrow?

Between my layers,
are my flaws.

Not the Greek Islands
again, Wall.
Not where my last glass of
Summer wine
was drunk?

The tears slide
on my face.

The wine is finished
and in

your dusty corners
gathers moonlight.

I toast to you
Wall.  

Nothing ordinary
ever was
so still.


Caroline Shank
8.7.2022


The 1970's movie
Shirley Valentine
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
History

My history is irrelevant. Or
say that strong winds blow
away the details we all
thrive on.  The meals we
shared over coffee are past
and strong flavors remind
me of the debates over
formica and Sinatra on
the juke box.

If I am, today, a thinking
person say that my ideas,
which I cling to so strongly,
are the stitches of lessons
learned and the rewards of
companionship forged in
the youth of the 60s.

The bombs of politics dropped
on our coffee house opinions
like cold rain on the
northern lobes of ideas.

Say then that I am without
formally able to reply to
your erudition.  I am not
pretty or laden with the
vocabulary needed to
conduct the symphony.

Remain forever young then
and if you can't read the
poetry of the past.
Travel the miles.

Sound your trumpets

Read Herodotus and
think of me once
in a while


Caroline Shank
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
People touch people in some
free-form folding of lives,
briefly, changing shapes,
always re-emerging against
new sides, blending like
figures on a screen, always
in motion, changing colors,
signifying some never-ending
continuum, floating in a
liquid teeming with
possibility, sliding
into each other, skin to
skin for the length of a
second.  Touch is the
brush of friends
at anchor.


Caroline Shank
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
I write you when I am labored
With forgetfulness.   I am
Unfolded. My drawn out tears
slip with a staggered downhill
run.

To my amazement I am dead.
The sounds of you pleading
have passed and in my relief
I rest on your letter.  

Time me Kangaroo down boy

I'm still in love with you.  Ha!

When you fell down the tunnel
was there a bright light? Like
in the stories? Did your mother
warmly call your name?

You didn't hear the hollow
hospital call from my torn
throat.

I will go smoke now. I picked
up the old habit from a rushing
rabbit. He said my time will
be soon and my sins scrubbed

off.

Why?


Caroline Shank
8.6.2022
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
I am fickle.  Let's face it.
I dated a lot of guys. I was
the girl in the red sweater.
Me and my saddle shoes.
I only wore Buster Brown
socks.

Look at me now. I am awash
In pink and sometimes yellow.
I don't like red and I don't like you!

Yesterday when we got married.
No 50 years ago.  Was it really
that long?  We pledged to love
Forever.  Now Forever is a
painful scar.  You were never
remotely interesting.

"so how did you like the play
Mrs. Lincoln?"

You say I can move on but
there is no place to go behind
the purple curtain.

Is this poem finished?
It would seem

that it is.  I will take

my bows, shed the
years and put the
memories in the

cardboard shoebox with
the painted scenery,

(please forgive the
Feminine endings.)

close the door and
see

my next adventure
coming for me.

I get pills

in the night.

I am in
San Francisco

to see Ginsberg.

I dream of
poetry and sand,
swimming
naked in cold clear
water…

and I sing in
my
sleep.


Caroline Shank
This poem is not about my husband who died in May. It may be a way to escape from all the nightmare of watching Parkinsons demolish a fine man and by c
Caroline Shank Jul 2022
HI Sam. It's nice of you to
stop by the carousel.  I was
looking for a place to stand.
My hands are blistered,
and I am covered with the
salt of ancient tears.

You are welcome to taste
a slice of yesterday.

My poems are stones to throw
Into the lake of imagination.
You ask, from my lips, a song, which
I cannot fathom.

My writings are my culminations.
The detritus of my lover's stories.
I write for them, the sea grasses of
which I am composed.

Don't take away the tangles.

I write for you to stay in the
grass castle. I apologize for
the rumpled beds and bare
promises.

I am scarred by my lover's
last goodbye's.

But Sam, I am

happy

to see

you.




Caroline Shank
7.31.2022
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