Old and timewrinkled.
Thoughts ripened,
fall from me.  

You lean
on my vocabulary,
I felt your initials

carved on my fragile skin.

Torn syllables
scatter.  The floor is
bone and blood.

It rearranges and
once shapes are
spill
into a forgotten

well.

Syllables on a clean
tile. ,
writhe.

Caroline Shank
10.3.2023

When the years are more than
77 I will have the God of old
age come over.

I will ask him what he can do
when the battles begin. My
brain staging a fight between
the god of old age and the
god of remembering.

Will I serve tea? or scones?
'Will I walk upon the beach"?
My notes fly everywhere in
the melee. And I think of

You.

Not the new you
But
the you of notes and
tablets.

I am torn.  Like school
Notes in a poem or a

song.

I am not old. Younger
than a fresh catch today.

Big mouths gathering for the
Benediction and the

Blessing of the quiet and
Softly.


But not soon.


Caroline Shank

Don't leave me alone with my
sadness, my madness.  I am
in the dark side of grieving.
Call to me from this side of

living.  Talk to me of the years
we spent collecting things which
still mount the shelves and table
tops of this place.  

Don't turn your back as you
left me that May day.  Not a
glance or a cough. Your silence
drives me. I am about to leave
you for a second.  Stay in the
chair.  

If I return and you have gone again
I will know you didn't love me
after all.  


Caroline Shank
9.29.2023

On Sitting Alone at Costco Eating a Hot Dog

and wishing you were there, the
strong maleness of you,  Your
daily grip on my loneliness. The

wait for you to get out, call me.
The beef flesh taste so long
forgotten on my tongue.
Tonight will be too late.  You

will not find me there   My old
walk out the door will never
find you looking

I sit alone knowing that this
long, left over afternoon will be
the last warm memory of

today.

I will go home from here and
prepare the socket of my own
life to leave this place

Forever.

Caroline Shank
9.28.2023

What is a tear but a rip in the
Universe? A jagged hole with
edges into your soul.

No not that but a tear that drips
from the ceiling of the house
that we built.  The clay of the
beginning we wrapped carefully

before tossing loss and tears
before prayers.

I pray with bent neck and closed
fists to hold the chaos out into
some facsimile of normality

while tears tear at my soul
and hope drops down the face of

yesterday.


Caroline Shank
9.26.23

Your song, like fire, burned into
the daylight skies over Mexico.

The cactus words stripped my hands.
These hands which held the
Universe above you for a long
Steel barrel you called Daylight.

I heard you when you said you
loved me, saw you ride away.
The cactus leaked and I watched
Your name form on the sand.
You turned and mixed me with

Jose Cuervo until I was footed
and could say goodbye.
The skies, painted by numbers,
wolfed down the landscape

In which I have been

erased.



Caroline Shank
9.20.23

More fool me. You named the
earth a green planet, the sky
often ten shades of punk.  You
told the Angels to leave your

scorecard at the door.

The Angel of abuse to the
Angel of love.  

Much of desire is so short
an afternoon.  

The bulls are running and they
Look to you to have

The answers


Caroline Shank
9.16.23