My Windows look out on the Hastas.
mMy plastic flamingos travelled
     back here.
     Here from Florida

My bolus of early spring
     flowers offer pollin
but no bees arrive.  The
Blossoms reach out to
     the sky.  

It is to no avail.
My hands
shake in anticipation.

The cup of leaves with bite
     holes sift the want
     from my poetry.

I am an adventure.
     Tomorrow I will write
about you. How youth
escaped me and how
the open dreams danced

a little jig, a show of knee

And

The

Last time

ever
    
     you

        called

My

     name.


    
Caroline Shank
6.16.2024

Patterns

The first bell tolls
White noise in the
green dawn.

Are you awake? The daylight
throws up on the rug images
of time refracted.  The
shape of bodies
satisfying a long cry.

Peace slips under the
door, spreads like an oil
stain,  

Time becomes the Apple
Tree.  The future is
truncated.  You walked

away

and I, I lay across the
weather and bury my

head.

Your poem covers me

Like

     a

       shroud.


Caroline Shank
6.18.2014

Today is a mistake, an aberancy
of time. The facts please.

No.

There are no facts when you
love someone.

The day, like a Harlequin novel
opens. The goblet in her hand
falls, the flowers can't catch up.

Think of spilling love like
milk.
You can never save
the white oil slick spreading.

Tomorrow will never come,
There will be only 15 minutes
of night.  

Memories
crawling into daylight

unexpected,

Finally,

constellations
slide across the sky.

The final ending:

“ your appointment with (sorrow) death
was always to be

here.”

Caroline Shank
6.13.2024


Agatha Christe

I found the end where I thought
it was too soon. The vestigal
wrapping of time is in the
dance.  The Nun’s habits
rustle.

There is dust in his eyes.
The sun is blotted out.
My mistaken opinion
forsakes him.

The dish of songs in my
late nights repertoire is
only food for the
neighbor's cat

I am hearing him
Pipe. The trembling
of my heart

Is the only sssooo
uuunnndd.

Caroline Shank
6.12.2024

I can't write when I'm coughing.
The spill of sound from my soured
throat, distinct  as brittle glass
when squeezed, the waiting
martini loosed into the air

Woof of bark and warp
of ice into the long inhale
of winter.

I write while you sleep, the
Soft cotton on my breast,
breath of forgetting denied.

The morning rasp awakens.
Another wasted day filled
With the.
    Loud call of
cough and bark.



Caroline Shank
June 4, 2024

One tear leaves, shiny vestige
of the brains transcription.
A movie house of dying
images scribes in cunieform
as I watch thru my prism
of memory

The racks of yesterdays
like layers of summer boats
in winter

of the claws of
sorrow,

the yank

of tears

Birth the ends of
sorrow when love

again

Walked

in..

You stood there
reflecting
my broken
healing, a

Refrain of

Saxaphone s.
Of love

In the

Tear s.

You Blessed me
from  your
so far

away.



Caroline Shank
5.20.24

Thoughts on a Sunny Morning


It's a sad **** day when
Memories fail and
leave without
a tool
for poetry.

Ric holds
the gate
but not the

key

Soulless longing for
the accidental brush
of synchronicity.
The breath of destiny.

Drunk on yesterday,
Without the touch
of indifference

memories under
consciousness
flay

me.

Bleeding,
the
pressure of
old promises

Unwright

me

Caroline Shank
5.15.2024