Would you choose to deny
me?  I can't breathe.  I am
filled with love for my family,
for God.  I am only old.
You will be too, you who
would triage my life out.

I contribute to my family.
I dig with both of the
hands God gave me in
the soil and grow beautiful
things.  I am flower fresh.

I am not broken.  No one
is broken.  You who think
you can save the life of
a younger person.  

Save Me.

I could be your mother.
Save her.  When you
make a choice remember
I was here first.  The Universe
is Random.  Tilt your
thought to  philosophy.

I have miles to go before
I sleep.  If you choose
the old ones, the infirm,
the besotted the young

Will remember you also

In

Time.


Caroline Shank


Prompt: the ethics of
triaging ventilators.

To be truthful my life has
been a waste of space. I
have contributed no thing of
value. Not beauty, or trust.

I have shared treasured
moments with friends and
family, all gone to ashes
everyone.  I have struggled
with the toxicity of this ephemeral life and poisoned
myself.  

When I die the clouds above
me will flee to warmer climes
where I was happy once.

Caroline Shank

Crawling up the building, blue
jeaned, backpack carrying bugs that looked like jacketed roaches reached the sills of power.  We watch as liberty is breached, as red floods the tumbled, broken
in windows.

I am stung by the chant that
passes for voices calling for
rebellion.  It is called a psalm
of ignorance and summons the
dance of termites who chew
our lives like woody pulp.

My mind cannot unsee nor
my ears unhear the shot
that killed. The shades are
unleashed.  Will we forever
crawl with the vermin of
unhinged politics?

I am deafened by the trumpets
of liberty, justice and the
conquest of infamy!
The triumph over the winds of
conquest will today lead the
Constitution again to wings of victory.

We Will embrace Truth in
the Arms of History!

Caroline Shank
1.6.21

Hard to remember the events
of a life so differently lived.
So short a time, barely cut the
grass.  She was fabulous for
half a summer.  Like a lady
in a perfect hat.  She was
glossy.

For half a summer.

Her voice cleared.  Her body
flew about the air like a breeze.
Music played constantly.  Her
humming a decible over the
bees.  She sang.  She dripped
over the sunlight like honey.

When he left she became
wax.  Her life melted in the
rain.

Twenty seven gone to
long.  She wished, her
whole life, to be twenty
six forever.

Still she sits.  
Uncomprehending
Looks for the wet
where she opens her face.

Just walking nowhere,
Bound for a song
she hears daily.
Her tattered memory
drops with every step.

Caroline Shank

The birds sit, goofy and slake.
Feathers drift, sift, settle on
chairs like soft shells shaped
by whisps of room air.

There is no thought, no plan.
Two white birds in two cages for
safety. The trill of calls penetrates
the living room air as if waiting
for the cue to caw to begin.

I hear you release the still
blue note, the crying color  
of the muezzin to my sleep.

The birds raison d'etre is your
morning blue creamy face.
My arms stretch to you.

Our blue
skies dawn and
the song

begins.

Again.


Caroline Shank
07/25/22

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

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

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

How long before you noticed
     I was absent?
Would you boot up expecting
     me to have my sunshine
     waiting like someone
     breathing in the air of your
     expensive cologne, alone?

That is the important part.  Would
     you pay no mind to the
     unspoken fragility of my delay?
Can you see me through the glare
     of my absence?

My hands, so still, make no move
to flex, the prelude movement, to
lightly brush the keys which spell
your name. The button I do not press to
start the bubble of exuberance, tingling. .
My chest contracts deeply and i
breath your name in a ritual obeisance
you might call a whisper.  I land
on the keys rubbed too shiny from use,
as a supplicant might continually rub
the Chalice.

I exaggerate, here,  the thought that
you would notice the omission
of a stain on the white cloth of my
restlessness.  I bow to yesterday.
Today waits.  Unexplain my
heart, call me by my name.
    

Caroline Shank

Unnamed

Unnamed she listened to the
unsung. No talent escaped
her no song unsung.

Only tomorrow was interesting.
The unbuds of Spring's tomorrow,

no

song of Engelbert’s or Waylon’s*
ever happened in the Time
of the fullness” of time

Did salvation arrive? What
was the white chariot being?

Elijah did not stop for her.

The dreams only patted her
head under the pillow

she placed

Over

her face


Caroline Shank
9.11.224

Dear, You Know Who You are.

Bless me Father for I have
sinned.

It has been twenty four
months since last i

looked
in the mirror.

Forbid me not the long
vowels of my
Poems, the

caesura of love in

the Winter in Wisconsin.

Summer's in the
Lake.  There's fire in
my old dreams

And you.


Caroline Shank
4.26.2024

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

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

Vacation

Florida stretches from nose to
fingertips.  The bold noise of up
here relaxes into  saltwater
beaches.  

I walk along tidepools and search
for wildlife burrowing in the sands
outer banks. The sun is my
companion. We know each other
well.

My tan hands reach for you and
we are stones in the wind.
To love is enough.  To touch
is the breeze of  night.  We
stay still in a swirling mass
of gulls.

Tomorrow is Return,  Today
is the prayer for the birds
to bring their young  to my
castle.

Castles fall,  Dreams lie for a
moment where the seas spilt
the sweat anxźd salt of love

lost  


Caroline Shank
9.14.23

You’ve spilled like sun on my
shoulders, like light through
a glass. Your face is in front
of me as I write.

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

The poems are fertile
vines growing out
through open windows.

You know me better
than I know
how to be.

Caroline Shank

She could not abide the
accolades.  Every syllable
scratch and poked through
her.  Layer after layer the
thorns of praise tore her

until one day she stowed
stones in her pockets.
She walked along the
side of the water, not
thinking now, not even
the recitation of reasons.

Thousands of words
behind her and she
did not think they
mattered.  She walked
along the bank and
gathered pieces of
granite.  She hoarded
these like treasures

until she had enough.
The first step was
cold but unnoticed.

She walked into her
death like a nun who
no longer feared the
confessional.

Her hair floated around her
like seaweed, fingers
like fish.  She stopped
the flowers of language

until there were no
more petals.  She died
consumed by a
brownness welcomed
after the lighthouse
darkened.

Mrs Dalloway
never gladly held
another day.


Caroline Shank

Virginia stuffed her pockets
with stones. I'm sure you have heard this before.  It was a
gray day.  I imagine late afternoon.

Cleared of all the syllables and punctuations she
was free to lower her so
skinny body into her shoes,
her bare feet covered with
crackled leather.

Another day and she would
have had a party to which
Richard would attend.  Perhaps
flowers, perhaps wine from
their favorite snug.  

The water was her aim, the
fruit of scraping glaciers her
goal.   I think of her when
skies turn purple with tears
windy days cascade
over me.

I haven't got the scenes rehearsed in my soul as
she must have done.  
Leonard heard her skin
call cry.  He found her pale
hand,

but


his tears were not enough.

Caroline Shank

I confess all my Sins.
But I cannot Atone to you in
your far away and never.

I lost you to Wind and Grace.
You were Silence when I
was Loud.   Always Polite
when I was Rude. No not
that only but say my Excursions
into Life were Alone.  You didn't
Ask.  I was not Infected with the
Desire to Tell.

Now you are Dead and i am
asked to Atone.  That I
Loved was the Death of my
Soul.  You did that.

I Cry now when you are
Gone.  I was not Kind as you
lay unfolded.  I loved you
in uncounted ways.  We
Touched the Edges of your
Dementia alone in the same
room.  

I Write this with your Kindness
to me like some Damoclean
Event about to Unfold.

Tomorrow will be the Currency
of my Poor attempts to

Apologize.

Death has worn me out.

I Write because i cannot
Speak.  Cry because i
cannot Forgive.  Life has
broken open the Capsule
of Reality.  

I am Fettered
and

Alone.

Caroline Shank

The sky is blue, the water green,
the sand is white and the Seagulls squawk.

The squish between my toes is friendly.
Try as hard as I can I find
no joy.  

The children dash about and
mother's call.  The red
bathing suit of the toddler
shines and is beautiful.

The lovers on the blanket
kiss, oblivious to my gaze.

The sun is strong, the breeze
is glorious.  The lifeguard
watches the bathers from
a ladder high off the ground.

I walk, alone, along the shore
holding no one's hand.

The salt air is filled with the
smells of Sunday.

You are off to the wars and
I am walking to Tipperary.

Caroline Shank
10.18.19

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

Did you see the one about the
serial killer?  Or the making of
Die Hard?

Laying back in my chair the TV
drones on.  The world as I
know it spins out of control.

It's going to be a landscape
of empty restaurants and
breadlines.  Of bad hair
and toilet paper.

Don't feel safe in the
tribulation.  A white horse
is about to wait at your
locked gate.
.

Caroline Shank

(Nothing happens unless first we dream.
Carl Sandburg)


Wet leaves leave traces
on the stony path to
Dreamland.  I Have
slippery intentions.

Tomorrow will decay these
thoughts.  Mind's tricks
pretend that the wet
leaves slip

up.

The dream ends.

Nothing
happens.


Caroline Shank
10.11.2022

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

Where In the crates of

song

notes and of

lyrics

Is the one, the singular
The Q of Stephen

to find among the

Beer bars.

Release Me

The song lay
unyellowed.

Then the growl

A finger width away.

But it was the

jazz then, the windows
thrown open

And you left

your song

without

pity.



Caroline Shank
3.10.2024

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

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

What I’ve Learned

Today, the mind meld is
spewing the kava of
my thoughts over
this place where I live.

Metaphorically.

I”veI learned

That I am egotistical.
That my vocabulary
   is DIFFICULT.

The years of myself.
The coffee, and the
   conversation,
   reading.

The dialectics, like coffee
and cigarettes, the years
over writing, revisions.
Books, sometimes 2 a day.
The Great Gatsby in an
afternoon

I Was not unusual.

There are more things
in Heaven and Earth
Horatio...

But I digress.

What will you share with me?
You who have been gone so long?  Will you speak of
everyday things?  "Caroline, the
weather has been so cold."

Will you touch me on the hand
that once curled around you?
"Caroline you always had
such soft skin."

Will you sing your songs to
me again? The notes of which
lay down their sound on my
lonely face like kisses.
"Caroline do you remember
how we danced that night
to the music playing on
the revolving colors of
the jukebox?"

Will you bring me
your Roses of Sharon for
all the years of desolation?

Will you kneel into my lonely
night of years of nights?
Will you share my tears,
all my fears, across the
darkening skies?

Will you take the evanescent
light and write joy in
my blue eyes?  
"Caroline do you still light up
at the sound of me
moaning your name?"

I will share your smile with
smiles of my own.
What will you ever share with
me in the flowered landscape
of imagination?

Will you share your thoughts
like petals thrumming on the
wind of your return?  
Or will I awaken
to the unslept on pillow faintly
smelling smoothly of
marijuana, in the raw
morning of remembering?

("Caroline!" the unheard of
to no one there.)

Caroline Shank

When civilizations die there is always
fire falling into the hearts of the
population.   Love is lost and minds
are numbed to the cries of politicians.
The ground shakes and generatïons
fall.  The loud music plays.  The dancing
never stops.

Poets are unheard amidst the bad
grammar and mushrooms of those
who have forgotten or lost the keys
to the kingdom.

The brightest lights are dimmed under the
laughter of ignorance.  It happens
in public places and private living
rooms.  Tomorrow the plates will
shake and coffee will spill in South
America and Norway.  Ubiquitous
on air personalities encourage
the madness.  

The drug of choice is television..
We watch the mardi gras
and swallow gin like
coffee to hail
the sounds of silence.

No one will hear the siren
of danger, or the whisper of
loss.  We fade
with a

whimper.

Caroline Shank

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

When I die I will not notice
you by the book in the room
where my ashes lie.  You
never took up space in my
life as I lived it, for you.

When I die I will not see
you not weeping for me
as you stand by the shelf
that has my name written
on it, too soon.

I will lie over you, invisible,
a scatter of memories
you won't recall.  You
left me to live without the
musk of your once,
love.

I will whisp around your
beating heart. You will realize
me in a moment.

You reach out for me,
the air, the stillness, the
forlorn echo of a
memory.



Caroline Shank

Now you are there where
the time turns out to be a
mixture of fear and joy.  
You live between the lines
and spaces of my mind.

We root for all the people
left on the battlefields
of this ****** war
on which we will either
sacrifice or lose to make
the last days of memory
and the dance of the day
our hymn to the silent
future.

We suffer, you and I, the
days of darkness and
strange things that are
coming at us like leaves
twisting off the trees.  We
arrange ourselves between
the dates that crawl from
the calendars. You say
we are going to get, in
the last days of autumn,
the first rays of Spring.

When I Think of you
I pray.

Caroline Shank

When I was a young girl I wondered
If I would find you.  I looked in the grass,
on the horizon, where the land woke
up each day.  I dreamed of your darkness,
of your hands sculpted by David, your
laugh.

I was younger then than I wish I had
been.  I saw your curls in the glass
of my future, your amber eyes stolen
from the Baltic. You guarded my time
telling me that of course I was happy
once but my mother took me
/
away.  She watched me for you on every corner of Chicago. Looked for your blue
eyes in the stranger she finally
married.

But he wasn't you and the penalty
was high.  My youth was her batter
which mixed with gin and
codeine she drank daily.

I found you in a hallway walking
toward me.  It was on a holiday
granted to me once.  I knew you
before the world was made.  The
glimpse of your silent betrayal
left me envying younger women
Before.  I knew you
In the hours of my life at last,

When I was a young woman you
found me. I was braille, you were
soft.  You left me in the tears
of another waif the dust blew in.



Caroline Shank

When men love they move slower
than dawn rolls onto day. Arms
turn toward each other as if to
grasp their beloved as raindrops
grasp the stalk of a flower,
melting around tender shoots
like silk wrapping. They whose
feet have always left sound
behind them, their prints
evaporate in whispers.

Men gather in bundles the
persons they have been, select
the best, the finest moments,
to plant by the porch of the
adored. They go through the
weather of their passion focused,
translated into a language as
sharp, as clear, as cries in
blue sea-gulled air when
nothing but nothing stands
between nature and desire.
The goal of movement is charged
across a world lost to all
desire for choice.

Men love with a kinetic so deep,
so intimate, it is movement inscribed
on every breath.

If then the moment should
come of the crack in the bell of
the heart, when daylight rips
the landscape, they fall, as a
rock falls, to crash along a
beach utterly void of life, to
become trilobite in noiseless
water, moved by the purposeless
shift of time and stone.

Caroline Shank


(This is the best I could glean about men in love. Being female may not have helped.)

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)

Hope, slowly pathed in the
clear smoke of a joint,
gone.  

Caged aspirations.  Who
gave permission to stoke
the mourners,
to increase the music?

In the wake of his youth
he said No to the sight
of lost doors.  Thrown
stones.

Where were you when
the dancing began? The
title of the sermon undone
in the

Church

Of

Insanity.


Caroline Shank
9.1.2022

My friend is gone,a way of
leaving, mirrors October.
    
A warning salvo is flat footed

against the failure to bond,
     A Bottle slips.

The Brandy puddles.

Where have all my

  flowers

gone?  Never a breath, never
a sigh even.

My Old is withered.
to wrong turns.
  To those who read
the magazines.

I persevere
the unwritten
untold.

There is Now.

The failure of laughter
at my expense.

I cry unheard.

The Silence.


.
Caroline Shank
January 8. 2025!


~~

It's the wanting you  
The wanting your mornings, and days each wi t h their
own nights .  The Syllables
of weeks each a territory
whose river's song, the blues
of which I lay me down
now to pray for tonight's voyage


Caroline Shank
February 24  2025

Whispers

She whispers in his ear
of the love grown so long
out of the shelter.  

She says
how much she loves him.

He hears the
trumpets,

God's voice.



Caroline Shank
2.6.2025

Who are you to take my
Life
between
your drive to
change the landscape?

Do you unholy man seek to
save me? Are you constant
and believing in the Rightness

of your sanctimony?

For What is your Purpose?

You misunderstand my wrath.

Not in this world are you

Anymore

The mute destructive act
was not from caring sprung.

But

from the tongue you spit
Out

the ordinance

of my destruction.


Be out of my Poetry

Forever.

Forgotten



Caroline Shank
January 29, 2025

Who Will Miss Me

Who will miss me
anyway?
The Autumn’s imperative
signals the
long division of my
mind.

Under the geography of
Love is a fear that
nothing

Matters.

Longhaired dreams are
features of the young.

It's the Emblem of the
70's.  The crusts of the
untried. No matter
tears on the rheum.

Why wait for love?

There is a
whisper
in the

afternoon.

Only the sad
know

Literature.


Caroline Shank
August 31, 2024

Why should I stay?  I can
find no existential reason
to do so.

Family?  That is emotional
blackmail.  I cannot defy
their reason, but I can't
make sense of it.

I see worms in my soup,
snakes in my dresser
drawers.  Everywhere I
look there is putrefaction.

I am to be cremated.  My
Urn waits with it's label
already in place.

But! Hear the reasons
why I stay.  My God,
my soul's supporter is
not ready for me.  This
I believe.  That when it
is time for me to leave
the violence of this place
I will be shown the way.

This I believe.  That my
family is succour to my
pain and I am grateful
for them.  My children
are made of the same
stuff that gods are made
of. My grandchildren bloom
with my vision of purity.

The worms will not have
me as long as I have You
to listen.  You who are my
soul's radio.  I turn the
hymn of Your life on

and wait.

Caroline Shank

Why Should I

Love in you your crumbs,
the
humor,

the drip of tears from your
moist eyes.

The retro lip with which you
Spew your vision amongst
      pearls.

The climb to you began
early in the morning,

wrapped around and
  Called me

out loud.

You were Jesus
to my
mutiny.  A Promise to
carry me on wings.

There is no ******* Garden.
The reference
only works on those who
are too drunk

to stand up.

In your day I partied
beneath the walls

of Gethsamane.

I wore leaves and
saw

your name

Victorious.


Caroline Shank
10.21.23

Will you be my Valentine?  Next
year of course.  When the red and
white polka dots star out the
night and I am confounded
with your beauty.  

Why haven't I written, you ask?
I have dumped my life's colors
onto pages
and into notebooks for you.
I am a woman of many words.
I describe events in the shells and fossils along the beach we walked when we loved each other.

I am engraved by the events
of your stone hard meanings.
I wrap your adjectives in the
filo dough which lines me and
through which my delicate
remembrances filter.

You are the spoon with which I am measured.  Myself into your coffee and cream, you into my death defying
dare to life.


Caroline Shank

The birds are back. Little leaf sized
flutterfings of brown refracting
movement to some rhythm heard
from beyond the canopy.

Today is a whisper from across the
yard. The daylight folds into evening.
Tomorrow waits under the sunspotted
green leaves.  Will you be there
when the day's linger or race into night?

Caroline Shank
3.15.22

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

Will you make love to me in sunlight
and in the rain?   Will you sing to me
when the hours go by? I will be in
your voice calling.  

Will you make love to me in winter
when the pale day is soft
snow against the windows?  Will
your warm breath leave patterns
on my skin?

I will be your landscape.  My love
is an echo.  You will hear me
for years.  My soul is the perfect
moment melded with your kiss.

I want you to run with me toward
the early spring of our youth. To
remember beneath the kiss lies
love unparalled in literature.

No, not Tristan and Isolde, but
the coupled clutch itself opened.
Where they were unrequited we will
soar over wars and peace.

Will you love me tomorrow when
I am rubbed with age?  I will
be the first one to go to the
stars.  I will be brave today and
you can take my soul to Heaven.  
Will you still love me tomorrow?

I will love you after you are gone.
The tears of my memory will
outlast ever your casual goodbye.

Caroline Shank

So it all ends not with a
bang but

With

A

# *******

Whimper.

Sad night's in prayer.
Shriven of guilt.
On the freshly vacuumed
Floor.

Not the sounds of sad
crying but the whoosh
of stifled prayers

Of course. Penance
For crossed lines
In the ashfalt of
propriety.

Lord I know not

What

I have

Done.

Posters say travel.
I will crumple my
Not so sea-worth
weighted with
Soul. .

Whisper

Will you still
love me

Tomorrow.?


Caroline Shank
07.10.2024

Tree limbs spike the
air.  Fingers
shred summer skies.
Wind is the
sliding movement
realized.

Life is rhythmmm.

Wind storms sand.
Red is the color

of skin.  Touch
forshadows response.

Bodies remain.
Awareness
regained.

September's shreds,
tears, shells.

Tomorrow hides
in snow.


Caroline Shank
9.25.2022

Winter stands on flat frozen feet.
Cold circles swirl, move and in
daylight masquerade.I am
blinded by the stinging swirl.
Here, near my window,
the cat's bowl rests
on the dark plank floor

This season's Specter, the
Ghost days wipe all memory
of high soft summer winds,  
a deep water, strong
and free summertime songs.

May I be patient with this winter
cold mutt of a gun down on the
wide hipped grey trench which
in summer feeds my poetry.

You may ask why I seldom write
these days.

I wait for you. I warm  
that for which you are
not responsible.
But like Mable in my poems

you sing.


Caroline Shank
2.10.22