I write in flames of love
unallowed.  You who do
not know the pain fly on
Dove's wings

oblivious to the heat,
the colors, the bent
dreams as I reach

For the sight of you.
Fly away.  I will burn
here in the fires of

my hopeless devotion.
I am red with lost
desire.  Fly to the

land, light on the
water, I so long for,

You.

Caroline Shank

I have seen my shadow lying
on the playground of your
mind, and I was aware.

I have heard you sing my song
and I was taken.  Have you
seen me running to the beat,
beat, beat of your steps tapping
on the paths where we stopped
that day we made love in the
garden of the old house?

I'd have chased your music
into that tomorrow rain if you'd
asked.  I slipped behind the
tree to wait.  I saw you
running on the sunbeam,
down by the river, dancing
like a dandelion spore
on the breeze of evening.

I called you and you waved
your panama in the vestiges
of my dream.

Was it all imagination then?
running down my mind.
Touch me again where
you counted my pulse
leaving me breathless
in the corners of my soul.
It was a sweet dream.

If you ever find me running
toward you stay for a time.
Turn around elusive piper,
my body moves to your song.

Dance with me when I am
dreaming. Throw me a kiss in the
Summer breeze that tastes
like forever in the space
before awakening.


Caroline Shank

The snow goes away.
You call me out to play Lord.
I feel joy at last.

Temperatures rise,
Spirits dance in the daylight.
You catch me spinning.

Tomorrow gives way
to a dream. A warm balming
wafts my soul about.

You melt my winter
like icicles in the sun.
I run toward spring.


Caroline Shank

You’ve spilled like light through the glass. Your
poems are in front
of me as I write.

I break through.
You are the Spring
in which I have grown
green.

Your poems are fertile
lines growing in
through open windows.

I write because your
poems show the way.

You are the teacher,
I am the scribe.  
My poems are born

and

I write while your sun
beams light
on my page.


Caroline Shank

Outside my window is a globe
dropping frozen tears
that hover between the small
spaces afraid of touch.

Distanced from each
other by the sweeping of
grass on the frozen seeds
of a landscape falling from
trees.

The sky is abandoned to
fate.  We walk on tiptoe.
Today is not enjoyed.
There is no kiss.

My bird sings from her
cage, oblivious to familial
possibilities that render
me reaching for the
soap.

Snow turns to
glops on wet pavement.
We stay indoors.  Our
own globe infected with
a search for sanity.

We can only touch
thru glass.


Caroline Shank

"I have forgotten your love yet I seem to
glimpse you in every window". Neruda

The closer I come to your image as
I pass the shop windows the more
I can't recall your touch.  My skin
no longer vibrates as you once knew
it.  Do you remember?

I have forgotten your kiss.  Your
red lips in the glass do not resemble
memory.  They are the stain
left in my soul after longing
has gone.

"Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring."
Neruda

I no longer look in the glass to see
you calling.  That I no longer
remember.

Your glimpse is a broken pain
to my still aching denial.

Caroline Shank

We walk a little in joy

Then we fall to the grass.

You touch me and I reach


for the stars. You whisper

and I feel your breath

In my sighs.


Don't be afraid, but be

careful of the lights

that cover the evanescent

moon.  


We are beautiful in the night.

And when we wake our tryst

will end.  I fade always

in the sun.


Caroline Shank

To think about getting old?
Ay that is the question.
Tomorrow rapes the day
of sentiment, the curling
onion skin that never

unrolls.

Any mind cannot comprehend
old age.  The loose tooth,
of retirement falls out.

Hope falls from yesterday
when,  albeit time allows,
the young scalawag cross off

future’s possibilities as the
insensible droppings of
the cat who remain in the
corner.  The shedding of

youth’s romances.

Old age ponders through
rheumy tears the last
kisses , the shoulders
on which shawls

Droop


Caroline Shank
10.8.2024

It's all behind me now.  The
days of wine and roses, and you.
I was young in the tender
of my years.  

You were curled and red, the
tight nights of summer dimmed
my eyes.  The breezes
of June were wrapped embraces.

In these, my last years here, I dwell
on summer.  No matter the cold of
Wisconsin, it's the brilliance of
then that I rub on my face like
fine oil.  I remember the incense.
The musk of your scent
lingers.

We were a tune that played for
the span of one summer.  It
is as strong in my memory as ever
were your hands on my face.  

Once when I loved you,
almost fifty summers ago, I
promised I wouldn't hurt you.
But you left me to
broken poems.

I am wooden in my age
and I dance with hard
shoes.  The days are
long and the nights
no longer sing.

Caroline Shank

Only small things, a moment,
a book title, the minutes
it costs to think of you.

The ends of conversation,
served, a chip of being.
The loosed love,

hovers.

A savory
is refused.

The empty glass
a refill.

Tomorrow is left
out of me.

It lies like the last
syllable

of my shriveled
lexicon.

I am unraveled and
like thought itself
I go

away

from even the

thought

of you.


Caroline Shank
7.19.2024

I write this poem as memory.
The warm night we danced
over the pizza place to "Me and
Mrs. Jones." or the trip to the
museum.  

We were tan and
dressed in white.  Summer
was knocking and we
opened the door.

It was a fine door.  We didn't
know then that the wind from
Canada was coming for us.
We drank as we shared
your jacket.

"Listen" you warned me you
were leaving, calling me to wrap
your fleeing shadow around
the mannequin of July.  "Listen"
pounding in my head.

I write you into poetry 46 years
later.  See, I hold your flame in
my hands. Drops of ash in
a goblet of memory.


Caroline Shank

Witness

I don't remember the last
kiss
that swept me away
arch of my back
slip of language

Kiss

The aged are forget,
are watched.
The threshold of
the past

is never crossed.

Wrinkled  like
yesterday is blown.
is

fallen.
The floor
is

scraped across
planks of
blond colored

dreams.


What you see is the
Last dance,

of the  only
music

left.


Caroline Shank
6.26.2024

I am surprised to discover
myself in old age.  
I repeatedly find myself in
the 50's or 60's
as if I never left. It's truly
shocking, the image in the
mirror, the chubby, no fat
old lady I said I would never
become.

Here I am.  Looking young
through old eyes, wearing
sensible shoes thinking
spike heels and fancy hose.
I am still 27 not the 74 I have
inadvertently become.

I am flat shoes and sweaters
in the summer. No hot
tan or sun bleached hair.

This is the time for rocking in
my chair not the dance
floor.  My, I was good.
When the music made sense.
I have my favorites still.
A playlist we danced to.

You kissed me in the dark
and left me in the rain.

I must rearrange my baggy
pants and sweaters. I shy
away the summer breezes
and shiver in the sun.
I look for you in the night,
find you in dreams,
a dear lost
moment.  

It all went by
so fast.



Caroline Shank

Stones.
Blue dancer.
On a beach
reach
Welcome.

Tomorrow's
Light
The.
Star is

bku+líyhú
In other
words
Loved killed
My mother

Scraped shoe.
Arsenic is
4.0 on
A scale of
death;   b bb bb;

Tomorrow's
Tattoo

**** up.
I am. Alone.

Tattoo
You said?


Caroline Shank
10.3.2024

I saw you in the Alhambra.  I signaled 

And you gathered the purple from

Night, flew with me to the

ring of clouds and married me. 


The sky sang, the birds as big as 

mountains were our witness. 


You sang a song like Thunder. 

We rolled our love

across the sky. 


We will live a thousand 

times Longerthanforever.



Caroline Shank

Can I ride on the
colors of your conversation
to the door of tomorrow?

Can I glide slowly away
from the syllables of your
wisdom and philosophy?

Can I go now? leaving you
my soul on your plate?

Caroline Shank

I write so you will answer me.
I see you sit, your confusion
curled like hair on a new poodle.

I write to touch your face with
my thoughts.  Know that my
fingers wrap around your sorrows.

I offer my hand in reply to
your silence.  I wait for

you
to touch

me.

Here I am.  I write words
in the wind

which brushes

by you.


Caroline Shank

You are very likely watching

football and I don't mean to

interrupt.  I am thinking of you

and wondering how you are?

I know great and terrible things

are occurring in your world.


My world is failing by chips and

blisters.  It's third down for us.

Tomorrow will exist as it always

does.  


But I will be glad to have some

time alone.  To feel you

not always coming in my

door.  To sit and think about

how much I want a cigarette,

a glass of Sherry.


You may not walk in 

and that matters.  It really does,

but not as much as yesterday.


Play your silent games.  

I reclaim my life. 

You don't have to look so

puzzled.  

We were not so very much,

after all. 



Caroline Shank

It's a movie afternoon.  On the
menu today is Stephen King.
Pennywise, gruesome and
gore.  Sit tight the clown
is coming. Up and over,
round and round.  Balloons
rip the fragile air,  Screams
tear through today.

The sewer is full of blood.
The axel-tree is full of mud.
I see it in the look of his
face.  "I'm coming!" is his
insistent cry.

Who's in there now? Go in
and see. I am bound to a
mixture of fear.  Stir me up.
Tap off the movie.  He is
scared even as he writes.

I turn around and see the
clown.  He melts into me.
I only know enough
to run scared.

I am bound for the after-
noon train to Derry.

Caroline Shank

I thought you were good
for me, but you're not.  You
are pretty and you sound
like a soft summer wind
whistling through tall grasses.

You have so many sides.
You run your hand down
the gentle nubs of my thoughts.
One side caresses and another
side wounds.

You rain along my stem.
A footprint on my
back, a signature to
an iambic attempt.

Your voice is the poem.
The sound of absurdity
is the dilemma.



Caroline Shank

My poems fall flat
like a slap on a
warm winter night.

I'm an old woman
in a dry season.
I tally the years on
prayer beads.  The
clack doesn't help.

I call out "Dr. Dr. Take
my breath away. It's
all I have left to pay
the toll."

I try and try to call
you but my hands
fail.  There is
nothing left of
me.  I lay my
crackled hands
on a picture
you might

remember.


Caroline Shank

Gaza

There is in the madness
of this planet a hopelessness,
a sadness beyond which we
cannot crumble.  

Scraps of inhumanity are
sweepings the winds of
Hell blow up to circle the
soft underbelly of
civilization.  

Nothing in which we are
to believe, is left on the
soiled platform of ignorance

There is no place for prayer,
the Psalms are lost.
No fires burn to heal
but to destroy.

There is one left that
Jesus loves who cries
in loneliness, the arms
that reach one time

the voice that, alone,
says yes to the flames.
You cannot burn my
heart

I love and you cannot have
the name of my beloved.
On my soul is written
the future
after the fires are out,
when the children hold
tomorrow

and I and my love
are free.

Caroline Shank
9.29.2025

Today is Fr



I ponder life and sometimes
the whole solar system.
Why am I here? for what
purpose except serendipity

did God figure i should walk
the hallowed hills..  I was not
included.  But to be part of
the ******* experience
of Bill and Rita.  That did
not work out very well.

I digress that is not the Way
of Things for me now that
I am 78

So. I ponder.  That's a
silly word for the cogitations
I spend God's time with.

For instance I am presently
in the doctor’s office.  

This
poem i
read
frequently.  


I take the minute between
light and napping to be
with my friends.

I am about friends and
sharing stuff.

“I don't know much
but I know I love you.”

Aaron in the dark with you
And I slither into
reality.

“Love don't come easy”

It found me writing
the last love song.

To you.

Caroline Shank
10.17.2024

It's New Year again

Winter brings another flavor

to my lonely heart.


Caroline Shank

12.31.19

That say if you stand at Michigan and State
in Chicago long enough you will
meet someone you know.
My mother always said that.

Will I meet you there?  Will you
see the eager young woman you
once knew?  You know, the brunette,
thin, full of your blue eyes looking?

I will stand there for all the years
I have left.  I will shield myself
from disappointment, having forty
five years of practice, I wait
like Penelope.  You have only
to sail your ship to my side.

You are a voyage I can't
complete alone.  Raise your
red sails.  I stand on this
corner to save the life I
once threw away.  


Caroline Shank

The clocks,the ticks,
the chimes. people pop in and out.
In thrall with the missing

figures behind the carved
wooden sides.

On the walls were the
partakers of this vigil,
alert to the footsteps
on the stairs, the whisper
from one to another.  


Here
from the side door,
a piece of rhetoric,

offers the scribbles,

on
the
****** sidewalk where
I lay,so long ago,
counting my sins.

In me the balance,,.    
the ****** years

of a lost forever,
love, in the foggy
whisper,.

the sounds of

days gone by.


Caroline Shank
9.26.2024

Work in Hell

Another Gaza poem

When you work in Hell,
children killed, mothers
stunned.  

No screams
allowed.

Red daylight is
a way to see the
ruts the trucks

leave.

There is no curtain
to raise.  All the
players are

victims

Red shirted people
rush to the cries of

despair.

Your life sanctioned
your participation,

you hold to your

mind.

Irresolute anger toward
God to do

something.

I knew you then in
all your determination
to

help,

show as you can
the ways

Out.

Caroline Shank
10.6.3024

KK

I remember prayers
from long ago
suddenly sounds in
the

Air.

Your guitar brings
music to safety,
always
calling the way

out

We used to spend whole evenings
grinding on your playroom floor.
I learned from you to kiss through
clenched lips, to watch TV over
your shirt stained shoulder. Your
sister, my friend?, Eating popcorn

You left when you were done, me
to make amends to Kathy for the
adolescent floorshow.  To eat
popcorn to stop my stomach
heaving with excitement.  

You told everybody.  I had to walk
through the fog of laughter.
Not even the memory of your
lying words that night
could rub off the smear of
regret.

You showed me deceipt.
I turned my face to the wall,
crumpled and bleeding.

You sent me
to Hell with every

crack of your laugh.



Caroline Shank

You join me.  I am the receiving
slot to your philosophy.  We talked
for years.  You pushed the
red and yellow of your crazy
mind into me.  I was

the join to your metaphor.
You were the tendon which
completed the fit.

Now, lumber on the barn
floor I am martyred.

I tried to love you, my soul
inhaling your every thought.
You unearthed the grain of
my waiting mind.

You finished the fence post
of our friendship and moved
to Cincinnati.  I fell over,
A tear in the fabric of
magic.

Caroline Shank

The neon sign writes
against the dark.
Let's stop for a beer.  It
has been a long time.  
It's crowded
in here tonight
crushed with the
sketches of people
we once knew. ..

Just a quick one
before we reescape into the
dream. I will wait for you
at the table by the door,
watch you bring again
the ale of our last
date.  

Little did we know
the years would be so
cruel. We will reach,
once more,
each to the other, in this
smoky bar. ..

Y Not?


Caroline Shank

Relief from covid19. Jeopardy is
better now that Trebek is still
willing with us.  He wears white
wigs and speaks through chemo
sores.  What a guy to stand,
background to our greatest fears.

Women fight the public fight.
******* plop into pans.
******* skin is patched.
Men's breast tissue falls into jars.

There is no change in the drawer
for lost time.
I am not going into mammography
again.   I'm old and pain
yearly is not on my schedule.

My brother died of throat cancer
I think.  He was sick of an old
dream anyway.  Maybe it was
my mother. But I digress

Jeopardy is not relevant to
anything but it serves me well
in my aged isolation.  I'm not
sick of dying.  I am going well
into my old age, into
time future,
and into time past,
which is always now
according to Eliot.

I go into the night half clothed and
remember the words to questions
gone by.

I answer in my sleep,
and I pull my earlobe in homage.


Caroline Shank

My Daughter Near Drowning
  in Lake Michigan
     Seven years old



So cold and still her eyes looked
up at running me.  Glass is like
the water between us.  I am
Christ.  I never felt the wet
and never sank.  I reached
her through the mirror of
myself.

I am her god now.


Caroline Shank

It's snowing in flat fat globs.  

The wet from which it is born 

laughs at me.  It knows I

feel alone in my misery of 

winter. 


The cold turns my fingertips

as white as ice.  I must have

injured them sometime.

I stay in the house mostly


and I dream of big spots of 

sun like Florida summers

en *****.


I wait for Wisconsin

to spill it's tulips and

poppies.  I breathe slowly

the gray days of January.


I sit cross-legged alone 

in the icy winter, wake

when warm air permits. 



Caroline Shank

Storied history.  Water the
color of your eyes.  The
various blues and greens,
the browns are all reflected

in my soul.

You stand in the cold
shallows . I saw you there
a long time ago, freezing
knees and lips.

I had to kiss you so long
on the blanket we wrapped
along your lanky body.

Lake Michigan.  You called
it my bathtub because I was
so eager to get there every
summer.  

Fossils like smiley faces
washed up into my net.
You helped me collect
them along the brown
shore sharp with the

memory of thousands of
years of brilliance,
Of radiant Joy when
the birds arrived, when
the glacier morained
and you and I fell
in love

on the shoreline of
a great adventure.

Caroline Shank

I am bent in half, sitting in my
chair.  My arms are covered with
crawling things.  My face itches.
My folded feet are cramped.

My stomach is collapsing and
my lungs gasp for air. I walk
upright so you won't hear
the breaths that tear ever so
quietly from the deep place
where terror thrums the
center of me.

I get up everyday
to the steel strings of my
unconscious.  My head
listens for something
I cannot hear.

Panic, like a guitar,
strums in my gut.  
It plays me and
I shake.

I pick this up, my
shattered life,
and I go on…

Dear Jesus, I go on…


Caroline Shank

Hey Alabama.  I drove through

you half my life ago.  You were

most green and gracious.  Blue

skies foamed clouds supine on

my skin.  A thin veil of fog an

unseen future away.


I slowly crossed your planet,

picked flowers on the verge.

I remember the heat.  The red

hair of summer curled against

the day.  Nights vibrated, a gong

gone mild.  Soft, resonating, still

resonating.  I breathed air in

like smoke, holding it inside

for long seconds, a question

waiting for its answer.


Long years have veined miles,

mapped time.  I am blued with

thinking of it.


Hey Alabama.

I remember.  Your highways

still, so sweet.  You travel

soft as sleep.

Caroline Shank

I hope to see you soon,
in the morning with
rumpled hair and boxer
shorts.

I hope to see you soon,
when the Spring sun
is high and the blue of
your eyes wash the
shadows of separation
away.  

I hope to see you soon,
when stars crinkle the
daylight and the songs
of the night cricket
compline.

Will we walk the
lined path along the
beach of memory?

If there is nothing left
after the lighthouse has
gone dim and illness
separates us forever

know that I will be
there in the interstices
of our heart's last
singing.


Caroline Shank

When the Universe lies
once

the vellum
of the Book of Life

fades.

The ink (always there is
Ink)

Sours.

You are my Page ;
play me.

You are the

Voice in my sleep.

Crying.


Caroline Shank
10.26.2024













⁹)

The sound of the tenor notes
culled by the expert plying music,
swiping keys and sweat from
the essential melody of the
saxaphone sends me into
the world of the sensual.

I breathe shallowly.  Sigh in
the tender way of notes
brushed against my skin.

I sit in the smoky club as if
alone in my secret self.
Smoke trails from my mouth

as he makes contact.  
The player sees me and
knows my helplessness
as he swings toward me
trailing the sound of his
sax across my waiting lips.

Caroline Shank

The jukebox was the only light
in the tavern.  
We were alone in the dry
recess of a lonely world.
You sang in my ear while
I swayed to your rhythm.

The song was a long low
cry.  I was urgent
in your embrace.  

I am reminded of that night
you walked away from me in
the damp laundry of dawn.

Turn around to face me,
the climate of my lonely
arms.

Hold me again to the tick
of memory so I can,
once more, dance
close to you.

Regardez moi
mon amour.




Caroline Shank

I failed at poppies last

year.  They turned to 

my soil and shrugged.


Red vessels with dreams inside.

Black and yellow inhabits the

cup inside delicately.


I watched them turn from

me in indifference

they, not knowing how I longed

to share their anodyne.


Caroline Shank

I wait for the cold dark to run
like *** down my chin.

I wait for the sun to round
the side of my building
bringing tomorrow's promise.

It was always to be tomorrow
when I taste your licorice flavored
mouth again.

I wait like the Oracle said,
for the time when the gods
will bring you to my song.

I wait. Coltrane blowing
forever in my heart.  

Forever, the saxophone,
your breath,
in my hair.

I wait for tomorrow. For music.
For wine.  A song to
sing to the empty nights.
I drink to the miles into
darkness…



Caroline Shank

Do people take car rides
anymore?  Is the cost too
high?

We would spend Sunday's
in the car exploring the
streets and lanes, farms
and small lakes or streams
around northern Indiana.

The weather was always
a wash of sunlight on barns,
small grassy paths, cows
and chickens lowing and
crowing.  

We would stop for a minute,
kiss as if we belonged to the
shade from the trees and
chatter of the singular little
brooks outside the car.

It was always gentle on
Sunday.  The car seemed
to know where to go. I
would slide across the front
seat and with my head on
his shoulder sigh, forgetting
the hundred pages of
Shakespeare that waited
patiently to keep me up

late into the night, the verbs
to conjugate for Monday.
They could wait. I remember
I loved to inhale the music
of the spring.  

A symphony
played as we rolled down
the windows of our pleasure.

Caroline Shank

he is still asleep

she watches television

another day starts



Caroline Shank

You inspire me.  I am somehow
more when I am with you.  
You have given to me the
grapes and the branches
I need to weave my poems
around the ink and the paper
of my imagination.

You took a partial talent and
it blossomed by your fertile
mind.  You knew me as a
tattered vine and wove
my waiting dreams.

I drink to you,
a toast
of gratitude.  

A poet's dream.

Caroline Shank

There is still the rocking of
decisions amidst the myriad
daily tasks of which the
true label’s my conversation .

If Macbeth is the analogy
du jure no doubt the
witches will once again
sing the single syllable
their vocabulary utters.

I toil while the firelight remains.
The maps of my skin are
particular, I choose you.

Skies clear deep blue ever
present in the unsleep
washing over the signature’s
toes, I go on.  The petty
pace of time like the
seasons regurgitating

****** reasons goes on.


Never before has the
changed Bible paused in
it's slouching toward
Bethlehem.

“I have seen the eternal
footman snicker

and in short,
       I was afraid.”


Caroline Shank.        T.S.Eliot
10.22.2024.               Shakespeare

I'm pretty easy to find.
All you have to do is
think of me.  I sigh
in your soul but you
can't feel me anymore.

I have started to move
now. Can you tell? I am
limber again after all the
years you have me buried
in your memory.

I come to you on a breeze.
I wake you up this
anniversary of our melody

and I sing about the air that
we breathed.  The last time
that we shared a joint

adventure

Caroline Shank

I write to know that I'm
alive.  Someone else said
that. I just can't remember
who.  I write the vowels
and consonants of the
swirls of my own life.

I remember in the first place
the keys that opened the
doors of wonder.  Not always
a good thing I can assure you.
Growing up was filled noise.

Secondly I remember the
troubles.  Years of pale white
when I witnessed my mother's
bitterness, my father's
kindness, the worldmakers
of our youth.

Number three taught me
to breathe in the screams
of my mother's midnight
rantings. This is when I
taught myself to smoke. The
cancer of her determination
was to ruin us all.

I stopped counting.  My life
after girlhood, cowl
of stillborn years, trod the
boards of marriage and
babies.  

You were the pages without
names.  Months of writing
torn from a book and
saved.  Can you find me
like a lonely letter?

I write to remind you of the
vellum we shared, so briefly,
to which this lonely passage
belongs.

Find me.

Caroline Shank