We will have a moment to
shape voice and touch
around the space
in which our kisses find us,

so you turn to me when
reaching,

warm in two AM sheets
holding our breathing
tight in the night's sky.

We belong to the heat,
to the sounds
that run swift and
sure as the constellations
to our skillful embrace

and love.

perhaps?

Caroline Shank
6.16.2023

It comes from talking too fast.
Words from thought spill through
me.  I am unadorned with
punctuation.  I write in long
lines of ideas switching from
one to another like trestles.

Some thoughts get stuck or are
trapped under wheels. They rub
me clumsily.

I speak only English in a stomach
churning speed.  To tell you how
beautiful you are takes pages and
curls of rushing lines.

I am a jumble of ideas out loud.
A scorch of syllables.  I digress
of course.  I am a stumble of
sounds, a cataract of meanings.

Listen to the scrape of pen, the
words enlighten,emerge, into
conversation.


Caroline Shank
6.8.2023

It's quiet now. I hear the washer
from the next apartment.  Even my
birds

are quiet.

It's when I think of you that the
spinning axis of the planet
requires my attention. The
door that alarmed last year
still screams.  You turned
away from me.  I heard the

slam of your heart, the ram
at the end of your life.  I left

without a kiss.  I live without
your steel.

I turn to where your son
shines and I am guilty

of loving you

still.


Caroline Shank

Act 5; scene 3

You shuffled off your mortal coil
at the wrong **** time.
The  denouement Is not here yet.  
Your death left
footprints into ,Dunsinane with
your Lady,  Me.

We had plans and schemes.
We didn't finish the play.
Dunsinane was ours. Your
birthday of will.

The rescue was sold out.  You
we're a hit.  The Scottish play
was untroubled. Your crown
cleaned.  You stumbled into
the play's last act.

That I must go on alone out of this
creaking pasture, this mudhole,
to be traversed without you
is a remarkable lapse in your
Ordinary

My hands hurt for the rubbing
of them.  I am alive because
you aborted the play.

Return to me. I have paid
Dearly

for this ticket that was

meant for two.


Caroline Shank
5.10.2023

First in 10, do it again. No said
she to his ashes.  The twisted
tale of tomorrow is laid over
today.  The premature moment
of death's blue face took you

to the painted tales of God's
permissions.  Go back to the
mausoleum's privacy.  

If it's tomorrow you could have
meant No.  The bed is unused.
She slept once in a chair and
your ghost brought whiskey.
Tomorrow

is for waking.  The green and
red of your container loosely,
on the shelf, waits to bring
her up to you.

Ring the bell the dead said
when you were new and
not yet freed from the life's
ordained limit

Bury her far away.  You will
not grab her dusty moans
for yourself

She never belonged

to

you

after all.

Caroline Shank
4.30.2023

revision April 27 2001

Recrudescence

(Recrudesce: to break out
again after lying latent or relatively inactive)

My friend,

There are doors which even you and I
have never opened. Shut for so many
years I am slammed back against
the sink of meditation.

Drawers unopened, their loneliness
stuck shut, slipped behind hinges.
Whole cabinets of dust. I wore many
selves. Stains hang here so far
removed from conversation
as to be little calciums. Calculi.
I rattle with little bones.

But since you ask….


Viz.:

When the gun was pressed against
my head I sat more still than a
fig on a summer tree, more breathless
than a whisper, more quiet than the
center of that fruit, It’s stem
my hair, I felt it's roots
take. I was sixteen.

I always wondered if the red dye
of my fear rubbed off on him.
He was silent, his face the only light
in the room, the phosphorescence of
madness. He couldn't find
me I guess, inside my aubergine
stillness.

He was a steel shaft in
his hand. At last he slipped
to the door.

In the end, unbreathing,
I saved him.

Ego te absolvo.

I was so afraid he wouldn't
like me anymore.

(Recrudesce: to break out
again after lying latent or relatively inactive)

My friend,

There are doors which even you and I
have never opened. Shut for so many
years I am slammed back against
the sink of meditation.

Drawers unopened, their loneliness
stuck shut, slipped behind hinges.
Whole cabinets of dust. I wore many
selves. Stains hang here so far
removed from conversation
as to be little calciums. Calculi.
I rattle with little bones.

But since you ask….


Viz.:

When the gun was pressed against
my head I sat more still than a
fig on a summer tree, more breathless
than a whisper, more quiet than the
center of that fruit, It’s stem
my hair, I felt it's roots
take. I was sixteen.

I always wondered if the red dye
of my fear rubbed off on him.
He was silent, his face the only light
in the room, the phosphorescence of
madness. He couldn't find
me I guess, inside my aubergine
stillness.

He was a steel shaft in
his hand. At last he slipped
to the door.

In the end, unbreathing,
I saved him.

Ego te absolvo.

I was so afraid he wouldn't
like me anymore.

I never saw things falling off
your shelves.  I didn't grasp
the hands of the clock who
bore witness to your aging,
frail thoughts.  The lack of
tremors fooled me.  The
mood swings were the
arthritis, oh! the pain.

I was so little then, so wrapped
up in my own sorrow.  I glanced
up and you diminished.  We were
old, our lives run out.  You took
the memory breach as a left
turn to Heaven. You cried when
you thought me unfaithful.

Never were you so.wrong.   I
served you silver but you
pointed to the floor.  My tears
were landslides.  Tomorrow
kept coming and the ashes
rested.  I walked out of the
chapel with sticks.

The years go on and I am

so still

in the

jungle,

pray to be eaten.


Caroline Shank
04.17.2023

I can't do death again. Unlike the
soldier on the garden path who
treads his life in patterns I have
no facility for more losses.

If life is a Waste Land don't
remind me.  The blooms fall
from the dogwood, the daffodil
peeks up between the sidewalks.

The footfalls down some passage
which I did not take are the
detritus of a long life unearned.

Don't offer me your hand today.
When I am through this garden
path of reminiscences I will
forever make your tea,but I
will not speak of him who
bought my life.  He whose

mistaken leaves of memory
are trodden cold in the
footfalls of the unearned past

My past, the illusion of it rose
before this likeness in the mirror.
To be wrong changed the brown
hair to white.  The pattern of
silk to cotton.  The warm sun
to cold .

Patterns formed in the sequence
of a love unfilled like the house
not bought or the flower unbloomed.

I can't do death again.  Go with me
along this garden path to the
opened door.  I will take your arm
and I will not look back .

Caroline Shank
04.15.2023

The triad of writer, lover and
the loved, she in the night of
raptors.

Gone the ability for thought,
the skin for touch, the heart
like unpainted bisque.

Her clammy hands, the drip
rivers ****** lacerations
born in the saunalike cataract
before, it seemed time
became the stranglehold
of Now.

Decades even later, years
uncover the silt of pain.

Together was not possible.

The rant began.

The cataract consumed her.
She unbreathed

goodbye.

Sphinx still
riddled.

She sat for me
clothed in sand

and waited

saecula saecularem

Amen,

Gentleman.

Last call.

Time gentleman.


Caroline Shank

I cannot exist in the
noise of
heavy
breathing.  

Nght exits.
The wrinkle of sheet,  the
impress of thick tuned
air waits a turning away.

If you don't find me at the
stair know that I loved you.
That the movement of crowds
turned me away

that I saw you wave tonight
to the woman whose
@
Wore your name.

Caroline Shank
April 9, 2023

Written for a contest.

Will You Forget Me?

I am staring at the jagged rocks,
the dune of age,
The mica gleams,
I am involved with you
in some demon dance.

Your red corduroy is furred  
and plaid.
Tomorrow the world will end.
I will sleep in.  I will not
take calls.

I stutter through
the door into the
sandpits of memory.

Dear Lord,
We will not go gently.

We have secrets,
We travel
alone,

into that

good night.

Each of us
to remember….


Caroline Shank

If I come to you I will be unriddled,
singing and shot through with
poetry. My gift will be the rings
around my soul, the songbirds
and the winds of Jupiter, warm
touched my arms and the
long wait of my legs.

If you come to me be it on
a Monday when you are
at your best and relaxed.
Bring me the scent of musk,
the water gobleted in crystal
for my waiting lips.

We will clasp the future as if
it was Young.  The breeze

on our faces

blows over

the carved vows

on the birchwood

tree.


Caroline Shank
April 2, 2023

The voice, the bell-yellow
voice plays on.
Under the mind like a layer
of canvas lie the brushes
and strokes, the arms and legs
of memory.  The arrival on the
skin of sound is the moment
of love.  The unfurling of
the pallette.

You say, listen, the wail of
breath on brass is mine.  No,
it is yours.  The voice, no
longer alone, even when
unaccompanied, falls from
the blues of evenings or the
reds of afternoons, approaches
with footprints in sand.  We
are castled in music, our
colors unfurled.

Our fingers on the keys.  We
see the archetype of design in
the sound
the movement in the fabric of
stripes.  The sound’s colors
draw us to each other.
Listen.  The wail of breath
on brass is everywhere.
Listen.


Caroline Shank
Revised 3 28 2023

She got him all wrong, the strong
arms gone to brittle.
Clay is troubled to form the
impression.  And longer the
art of your dented and salted
mire.

For nothing like a walk in the
boneyard of the cheap motel
of her imagination.  

You are Rant and Ruin.  The
Remains crust and smoke
Tomorrow of her old age is
the rat trails of her poetry

I know this because she told it
to the murk and creep of your
deteriorating smoke.  The last
**** was unimaginable.

Run far and away from the
wrinkled visage of memory.
You are red and ruins in a
slot of yesterday.

Today runs through her like
wine and bread.  The table
is set for never again your
chair is broken silt.

Caroline Shank
3.22.2023

Tomorrow

There is no forever for me
The pulse of death stopped
and I am limping, I am
stammering.   You took
forever from my catalog.

Tomorrow issues from out of
a cauldron.  There are no voices
in the wilderness.  St Paul
come to me. I am short of
goodness and love.

Teach me oh Lord to skip
stones across the Jordan.
I will drink tea in a mug with
your name on it.

Brown is the color of my true
love's hair.  My white hair
shapes the Ganges on
your chest.  I told you I

would write.

Tomorrow's fortunes feature
you in some farther

field.

I awake from this deep dream
of sleep Abou

Where there is no wind, for
tomorrow never ever

comes.

Forever and ever
(Saecula saeculorem.)


Caroline Shank

There's an elephant in the room.
(Don't you ******* hate cliches)
It's growing around the furniture
up and over the years of careful

coaching.

I can't pretend at last.  You need
to ride the carnival behemoth
out of here so we can breathe.
The pink lady waits for her

automobile.

I want to go to that place where
emotions are colored and the
candy is not cotton. Where the
taste of chocolate rides my

mouth.

Another dime in the juke box
please.  The circus is pulling
out and all the cliches mount
up to the wedding of Miss

Haversham.

Nothing else makes

sense.


Caroline Shank
3.9.2023

Okay Country green and faire,
the rival feathers of America,
the soft shells of Siesta Key
Beach, the roar of the freight
train as it turned belly up in
the anxiety of a post qualude
weekend.

Marriage was the script of
the Land and grass the dress
the smaller stately Maples
wore spitefully as the red and
black Muscovy waddled up

looking for the crisps of bread
that Jim threw out every day.
The gospels of Sand Hills
displayed in the Red hills
colors.

The citizens of the Back Yard
smoked the tender joint while
I ran to the top of the hill, Jean.
The score my devastation wrote
on the billious worn sofa.  Green
toile soldiers armed with the
nets of armaments.

Toile was the pattern of my
tru loves coat.  Green were the
dresses flirtatiously spilling my
*******.

Then you lay my sorry self on the
deck of the ship Wisconsin.
My chair was missing and
we made clumsy love in
spite of the sway of the
floorboards.

Oh feature with me,
man of sorrows, to
the end of the play.
I will dance at the middle
and musk the top of my old
bear.

Bare my top and I will,
saucy,
be the selfsame

sinner after all.


Caroline Shank

I used my last chance, a ride
on the solar system of emotions.
I fell off and sat for a minute
on the eyelash of memory.

The long rope of my only
last and forever temptation
unkind and undone.

It's not true.  It takes a minute
to unravel the sinue wrapped
around the idea of you.
Wrought around the music

is you struggling forever,
trying to unravel the speed
of memory.

The seed of yesterday,  The
bed of undoing.  Red and
ripped I cling to the
final appointment.

Tomorrow is the kaleidoscope
you feared. The colors
patterns solidify and the habits
reveal the dead solid center.

I surround myself with the
sunflower blanket. The
synapse of yesterday tugged

before I knew you.

and dragged
the moon's light mine.


Caroline Shank

The mystery is not so much the
deed Tom but why.  

Of course the karma of
my acquaintance celebrated the
dedication with which I floored
the pedal over the years.

No I didn't leave an opportunity
unvisited, a door unopened, a cup of coffee undrunk,
or a walk down the evening hours
to the music of possibilities
unsung.  I learned to rub the
consequences into my benefit
and gave my response to the

night air.

I lie prone now reading on the
living room couch and ponder
the times.  An unseen vessel
pilots me from behind.  Hope is
when I sail her into the

long sought after meridian,

when the time
for poetry is over
and in the
afternoon I find your

conversation

waiting


Caroline Shank
3.1.2023

Never again.  Your voice like
thistles scrapes. It's tracks
unsteady.

Blood drains from the holes
dug by serrated edges.You
command the death of
Venus.  My throat expels
the vowels of the tirade
you unleashed.

To see, unleashed, the
ferocious silliness of
your torn words addressed
to the gods who long
before laughed at your

excavation of old bones
and misunderstandings.

Never again will you pillory
me, my torn lashings
       stung
in deep regret

for the years of meaning
now drawn closed like
curtains over a corpse.

One word bled from your
mouth, lifted me to my
knees.

Goodbye.

I laughed.

Never again.



Caroline Shank
2.28.2023

Number 1.

February 24, 2023

I am using this as an attempt to navigate the last years of my life.

Number 1. February 24, 2023

I have faintly seen and
     suffered my
brain
to
blow into the next
life.  

(Oh, Yes I believe
            In Karma)

There are enough grains of
nosand now in charge of the
serious songs of our lives.

I digress

Or did I forget what I was
rattling on about.

I forget the how-to's.  I'm
on the road to Damascus.
My epiphanies are bright
shots for only a second.

I've lost direction.  The
compass of my life
tilts.

There are roads to travel
           Yet,
People to see, loves
to find.
  

But to mix thinking

this Busy
            badly
Mable.

Not until Now.


Caroline Shank
2.24.2023

I am as close to death as can be
before the Throne of the Lord
lets me kneel before Him who
ordained that I should live such
a little life.

There will be no tomorrow, no
prayers before sleep tonight.
I am in thrall with my journey's
ending and I wait for the Great
Kindness to take this burden.

I am alone with only tears and
this pen to sign off before you
can call me back.

You would do that, you whose
memory outlasts wars and famine
and the last days of America.
I have touched you in private
places and feel the warmth of
you alive.

I am cold tonight.
I bring memories
to the fire of sighs.

I go tonight to the last
long longitude of my
existence and send
these bones sans

thought

desire

and regret

to your address of sorrow.


Caroline Shank
2.17.2023

Your words are flung against
my heart.  In what little esteem
you hold me.  Wraith of
my poetry you know not the
soul invested in the words.

All critics are not so smart.
Your God driven determination
to divest from what I write
the soul behind the
runes, that lives.  

Back, my literary whip
snaps and I drive you
into the intellectual corner
from where you write your
own expert poetry, driven
by the analytics that serve
you.

I will write my doggerel
that, to you, are the scraps
of an unaccomplished
life.

Caroline Shank
2.13.2023

How many times have I said
I love you?  Those words to
express that for which words
expire on uttering.  My hands
alone clasp the urgency of
this expression.

I reach for you.  Touch is
explicit.  Your heart responds,
and I am your song.  You
who never sang Sing now.

The feel of love is a reach to
the stage your heart has hidden

in.

I am tactile over my self.

You no longer hear me  
as you have stepped away.
The hours have turned to
days, into years.  More
than 50.

Yet I move. One woman.
hasn't the  power to reach
for your booked and ragged
Goodbye.  

But I will go on because
something turns me that
way.  Like a spiral whose
Need is to turn toward
the sun.  

You illumine my life with
the memory that once you
touched me,
spelling the future
I declined so many
times.

I cannot walk away.  This
strophe will not
stop,

the message is in my

stride, without
you now
I am chorus

to the

play.

Antistrophe
for the gods

amusement.


Caroline Shank
2.12.2023

.

I wonder if He can see you?
Is it all you believed?
Do you know now that
believing is the cracked

cement of your time
here.  It was not new.
Are the streets of gold
and are you walking in a
white gown?

Tomorrow I will write in your
journal of the Jabberwock.
You know him now, the painted
struts of glove and spats.
He tells me stories while your
world ends.

His bandersnatch is not
what you believed. Beware
the marble veins of his
indifference.  He says he will
En garde and you will fail.

You will, to the ground, bleed
in your reminisces, as he
walks into the water to wash
your lies with ***** soap.

Beware the stance of shaking
legs, the bleat of strangled sheep.
He cannot see you in your
personhood for he would
crumble into mad bad shoes
and slither away to your
last poet's rhyme.

Snicker Snack.


Caroline Shank
2.10.2023

I've started walking with a cane.
I'm like an old broken soldier.
Under the sofa are parts that do
not fit in rusty sockets.  New
loops and strings cannot

put
me
together.

I missed muster again and
got the letter.

I am
not required
at table

any more.

I spend my days twirling parts
left over from first rounds.
My springs boing hollow
and I don't
see well at night.

What will happen
to
me
now
that I have
seen the moment
of my greatness
flicker?

(I can still
quote Eliot.)

I want you more to
more than move me,
you starting my gears
and I overflow with

Purpose.

Your attention goes
and
I

no longer

see my any
self
at all.


Caroline Shank
2.07.2023

There are things
I did not do.

I did not  touch
you.  

You
died. Without
a sound.

Your soft brown eyes pierced me.
I saw you go in the quiet
way you did everything.
I knew you were gone
but not before I
knew sadly, silently
that
I
could not hold
you in a final

embrace.

Closeness had run out
so long ago,

though we loved until the end,

bereft of speech,
as we we were bereft of
touch.

I bowed to your
blank stare.

I would have died for
you if I could have.  

but I could not
save you from
this destiny

with the Father

Who

Loved

you



Caroline Shank
2.2,2023

Your not so slender form stands
in the bedroom door. You yawn.
I remember you before the
drugs took you to the ends
of my life.

Old now, the reckless
times are gone. Still you try,
hanging onto the threads of
yesterday.  Tangents of
circles.  

You strive to steer your
way through the long sleep,
the crash after
the burning addiction gets
you. You climb into
tomorrow like a crawl
Into infancy

and you tell me it's all
right Mom.

Caroline Shank
1.31.2023

No matter what I will celebrate
the deterioration of my body.
I will forget the sacks of my neck.
The scarfs flesh burdens will
       not remind me that I have
six minutes to escape and that
I will fail.

No matter what you see look
closer.  I am only a ticking
clock away from myself
you knew then. I look to the
        calendar, truths that
my mother knew, the due
date is ordained.

I don't delay the search for
company, I am sitting on the
edge of my genetic map, Henry,
waiting for my skin to turn
tan, as it always did, every
summer. No matter what.

I am not gentle.  I am a kick
away from screaming. The
lies of every soap manufacturer
are written in my old face.
And I don't like it.
         I want to be loved
again, to rise in the warm
morning singing.

To be alone at the cracked end
of the sidewalk is to be tempted
over again as I was at twenty
seven. The last real estate is
sold to the younger woman.
          The light skin of my
youth is pasted on his memory.
I would no longer
           be of interest to him.

The tomorrows of then have
passed and I am in the window.
The mirror is not true, it sees
me old and alone as the last
            line of the play.

No matter what I want to
remember the suntan on my
ripe body
but gone. No matter what
I cry to be remembered
in a life of gone by

dreams.


Caroline Shank
1.29.2023

The voice, the bell-yellow
voice of the sax plays on.
Under the mind like a layer
of canvas lie the brushes
and strokes, the arms and legs
of memory.  The arrival on the
skin of sound is the moment
of love.  The unfurling of
the pallette.

You say, listen, the wail of
breath on brass is mine.  No,
it is yours.  The voice, no
longer alone, even when
unaccompanied, falls from
the blues of evenings or the
reds of afternoons, approaches
with footprints in sand.  We
are castled in music, our
colors unfurled.

Our fingers on the keys.  We
see the archetype of design in
the sound of the sax, the
movement in the fabric of
stripes.  The sound’s colors
draw us to each other.
Listen.  The wail of breath
on brass is everywhere.
Listen.


101793

Did I help you at all, those long
months of clawed pain?  Were
you my soul search and did I fail?

The reach beyond the cuffs of
poetry.  Did you tell me so I
would pull out of some bag of
broken metaphors
a salve for your aching limbs
swollen with unheard prayers?

You lost your balance and fell
against my sorrow.  Did you
mean to throw me out that
night you pushed all the
furniture against the door.

I ran my irritation along the
upside down days of your
disease.  The sleepless in
the living room chair was not
enough.  I took your frail limbs
to myself when you did not see.

Did you smile that ghastly smile
to scare me? Or then I did not
exist in your dementia.
I was so ill myself that I couldn't
climb the ladder of your need
anymore.

Did you die alone in that room
of helpful people and did you
see me frightened and alone?
I could not watch you in your
emptiness, your shell of lonliness.

I am still crying for the memory
is in my soul of your departure.


Caroline Shank
1.28.2023

There is fire in the sky, the
green mountain frames a
landscape of contradiction.

Alert now, here there, birds
must fly behind the hot winds.
The sounds abound over the
landscape.  It was 4:00 of a
June afternoon. You called

to stop my journey. The  warmth
of a June afternoon lay like silt
on the place where we made love
only yesterday.

Goodbye to the birds and beasts
who sadly left home for the
last time.

I will remember the heat, the
touch, and the memory of
before ever you touched

my hair.

Caroline Shank
1.23.2023

I have tears still Un fallen from
my eyes.  They ambush me.
Your birth the
unexpected star of my
life.  Your full face, my
glowing reflection.

Early twirling years in
yellow plaid and a brown
horse named coffee cakes,
dancing on my lap.

You turned to leave me in
the middle of the afternoon.
Eons ago to my heart's ache.

I rock in old clothes on a
winter afternoon.  Your
lost Angel faces me.  I
did wrong.  I cried for
your beauty.

Lord of little girls forgive
me. I run after the early
years, pray for another
moment's innocence.

Turn me away from these
falling tears. Bring me
another time I may

not forget.


Caroline Shank
1.21.2023

I could be dead by tomorrow,
wrapped in the comfort of
silence. Spread out on the
floor of yesterday.  I loved
you so many years ago there
is a calm scrape on the days
meridian.

I turn myself in for being
ridiculous.  " Do I dare to
eat a peach? ". I cross the
sandpaths of memory and
kick the castles yesterday
left.  No tomorrow for us.

I, like Prufrock, dizzingly
look for the summer night,
walk unsteady in my old
age lest I die to finally

and forget.

Caroline Shank
1.20.2023

Tonight is soft, the Wisconsin
winter's chill is tame and I am
practicing for queen of today.

I am lit inside.  Determined,
I breathe.  My familiar scorn
is put away. I walk the city's
street remembering, the
calming soft breathing.

Tonight is almost over and i
approach tomorrow in silence.
I walk some more in the

chilly drizzle. So soft the shadows
smile back from the store windows.
There are no don't walk signals.

The neon sign in Maxwell's flags
me, lures me inside.
I walk on.  I want to reach the
seventh block.  It's a good
number.  I stop at the gate,
a small park.  I pass it by.

My serenity is a soul sculpture.
No longer a passage in some
one's book. I author me.

Thanks to the moments of
shared caring.

I walk on enthrall of the soft
winds that bring me home.

I am returning to MySelf.

Caroline Shank
1.17.2023

Bard of my reading, no less
the trail to my heart's desire.
Singing in the crevices of
memory I love you.

Ode to the bark and green
you awaken the song.
Sing to me in the spaces
between rhyme and
desire.

I wait to hold the source
of song, the poem of
you driven to the page
to lap the signs of
tomorrow like evanescent
cotton when spilled in
the wind of your
imagination.

Tomorrow the nascent verse
will spill like water on flowers.
Grow to the top dear Poet,
ride the board of memories

which sing in the lines of
your experience.

Teach me, Sweet Jesus, to
Sing.

Caroline Shank
1.15.2023

What is happening to me is
Irrefutable loss. The end of
my days, the vestiges of
an unpaved life.

Without you I sank into the
mire.  The mundane years
show in a thick neck.  My
shoes are unpatched and
where the buckles were

are scars from the uncaring.

My neck reaches now to find
the last vestiges of my over
weight.

The lane I have walked on
has no line but a footfall
indentation of a size 8
shorn shoe.

No to the voices calling
you.  I wrap my scarf
around the memory,
young and death defying
important and the now
dreaded
journey for naught.

Caroline Shank
1.15 2023

REC

She Wrote Again

She wrote again. I found her
letters, looking for the storm
of him.  The wind knocked
red hair, the black boots left
outside the door.  I read that

he left on a Sunday, walked
away without his trademark
whistle trailing Oh Shenandoah
behind him.  

The dim days followed.  She
asked everyone, where he was,
his blue eyes a DNA call away
from her.  There was no
response.  

She had no speech left and
the nurses were glad to be
rid of the man in the picture
on her broken table, broken
between the war years and
liberation.

She glanced backwards in
her dementia.  The rough
hewn Sundays, the lost
afternoons.  Her disappearances
not the less tiresome, were
gone.

She wrote letters over the same
paper, shop worn stationery,
over and over.

When she stopped it was on a
sunny afternoon.  No one knew
she left for the day before his
kiss became goodbye, with a
smile of relief.  

Caroline Shank
1.11.2023

I'm tired she said as she drifted
away to the sky of someone
else's blues. The sun of pure
understanding regaled her
until her sentence ended.
Oh God of desperate climes

rescue her before the clifs
of lost dreams win and
she dies in her dreams.

Caroline Shank
1.11.2023

Mary looked up to see tears
on Joseph's cheeks. She.
was exhausted.  The trip that
ended in the birth of her baby
was a flight out of Egypt

Tomorrow she would be in
quarantine. The contamination
of her body must be resolved.

Theirs was a strict following.
Her blood must never touch
hallowed ground.

The baby boy slept, unaware
of the Laws.  

Mary felt the sweat of her labor
dry stiffly around her forehead.
The World would wait.

Jesus's was the singular cry.
The long last breath of Hope
sweet on her face.  The
foreshadow of someone's
salvation loosed.

Mary sank into sleep
safe that she and the
baby could begin the
long journey to Calvary.

Did she know the last
of a mother's desperate
clinging to the moment?
Jesus smiled at her.
Cry
Mary brought light into
darkness, fuel into a cold
night and a will of

determination to sound
down
the Corridor to
this

Magic reenactment of

Religions signification.

Mary rested with her baby
for oh so short
a

Time.

Caroline Shank
12.24.2022

I have seen the marble arch
and was not afraid.  The
comeliness of it's curved
surface paused me. Your
song whispered of birds

felting by, of fallen kings and
reasons.

I have time on my hands to
listen. Hallelujah.  For my
steadfastness in love has left
me

bereft.

I swore to all the kings in the
Bible. I offered my skinned
knees, for solace that I was heard.

Hallelujah

There are cracks in my head,
my ankles are shackled.  No
music but a laugh echoed
side to side.  

I will go down to the river to
find God.  Your repertoire
is complete.

Why a monk Leonard? The
music of the ages was written
without your melody and
I sank beneath the river
like a stone.

But you're not there.  Your
music sustains me.  I walk
out, wet and cold.  

Hallelujah.

I am redeemed from the
nightmare.  I step on your
music as a soft petal.

I am for a moment, relished
and shriven.  

Hallelujah


Caroline Shank

Daughter of my life you are
still so fragile.  

I wait for the phone call that
will come any minute

Someone come and help me.
I grieve for your childhood. The
weather of our lives before
storms drove me underground.

You did your head to the
storm thing. Face forward to the
landscape of your reality.

I, underground, hid your self
against me.  I rode the waves
of your addictions.

To this Winter day I have only
the remnants left of your
early years. A few pictures,
a stuffed animal named Coffee.

You cannot come back to me.
Gone are your bounce and
the hugs around my waist.
Your tears that filled my brain
with helplessness.

You are all alone in this trap
of my mind.  The madness
slips through me.. Your tears
are but dry sand.

I want no tears to your
intentional desertion.
Silence to your pleas, and
old music before you

were

born.

Caroline Shank
12.18.2022

Help me make it through
Oh God of my unknowing
Brace MY name unto
even the farthest heartbeat.

The clocks dim.
I no longer hear the
movement.
.
Hand of years, the
children and the
getting. Minutes
bend the geography.

Take
me to the
honeyfields.  

I lie
down

to Sleep

I pray.



Caroline Shank
12.16.2022

Reflections on a Wednesday
              Afternoon
  
While waiting for an appointment,
I am **** bench numb uncomfortable.
I glimpse the yellow corn fields
out of the window…

I am sixteen.  The Autumn
of my last New York year.

Oh no, I am not dead like
the girl in the book I read.

I'm old and my youth
touches me.  I no longer
jump like a girl, but i
observe.

The traps and snares of
memory, alive among the
detritus of those years
dump into my basket
like fishy Fridays.  

We had a cat as
white and feral as
lightning. She would
lick the Friday platter.
We worried about the
bones.

But I digress.

The corn leans in, a
deliberate stretch
to hear the sounds I
left

I was a child of the 50s.
So long ago.  

The memories
are squashed

by the army
of commuters

who always
smote my

songs.


Caroline Shank

Your early inborn magic did not
fortell the whirls and winds
of the future.  The shine of
youth ended in turbulence.

Dismania, like fingers, touched,
you.  Ivy on brick, the tendrils
pierced.  Walls of
uncertainty nourished
and you, welcomed the

future.



There were no tomorrows.

Pulling you through the
mirror of myself you tore

into
uncertainty.

No Magi, not even
with gifts of surcease
brought by the force

of love
released you.


Still the running child
you crash into a future
whose spiders claw at you.

Tomorrow waits
protected
by your addiction.

Reach into the future
all you want,

you cannot tear the
crawl of your destiny

away.


Caroline Shank
10.13.2022

Morning has broken 🎶.  The song
of a single bird brings down night's
shadows, chimes the diurnal
trill of a new day.

The same shiny blue glare
everlasting.  

Gathered moments.

Groceries for the soul.


Caroline Shank

I. The wind blew.

The journey was rough.
They bent to avoid the
amber sand.

Joseph was fierce in his
Orthodoxy

Mary encircled the
Child. Tonight
would change
The World.


II. Bethlehem

Jesus CRIED, the
wind  stopped,
         the

Light of the World

        Arrived.



III.  Christmas.

   The
journey of the Magi.

The storm burned in
the night  A voice
In the wilderness
shouted.

Peace came briefly.
Midnight

slouched

toward Bethlehem


Caroline Shank
12.10.2022

He caught her thinking.  The
crossed legs signed
resignation.

She'd bloomed and thought
that tonight was lost

to expectation.

He rested his memory
of her smoke filled
denial.

Nothing left emptied
emotion.


Caroline Shank
12.9.2022

They're all dead, the men who
loved me in the backseat or
on the water bed.  Or not.
Or mostly.

Bless please the memory
of warm nights and street
lights.  The rock and
roll of hips blinded by
loves.  The music

of traffic going by.


The voices of love in
the night.  Rhythm
me now.


I loved the rhyme of hips,
the Song of
Throats rolling and
sibilant.  

Ghosts who haunt me.
Let us pray.

Come to me tonight.
Rescue me from

long nights with the

Lamp's signal's

Flash incessant.


Caroline Shank
12.6.2022