wind wraps around me
I breathe in the winter air
the cold ice crack snaps


Caroline Shank

Without a Kiss




Without a kiss hello or a wave
goodbye he travels the streets
and cinder paths.  He walks
beside her and never sees
her stained feet and
bleeding.

Tonight the sky is dark,
the crunch of autumn
leaves softened by the
rain of this afternoon
and the last bugs of
night, sings and the
quiet footfalls
remind her of another
lover.  The quiet sigh
from you throws a pain
around her shawl clad
shoulders.

No it made no difference
finally and with her tears
she scrubbed your name
from the temple where
it had been carefully
drawn.

It is said, somewhere, that
the long walk on wet street's
leaves leave only the faint odor

of my cologne.


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

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

You will not keep me
Winter warn
Or
Summer cool.
The arms
that were to be

mine

Are gone.

There is a cry in my
throat that

Loosed

would
stain the earth
and sky.

Brown,  teak,
sadness.

Lost again

Secula, seculorem.

Caroline Shank
6.06.25

I have a lot of stories but you are the truth

Faces in the dark.
All the same now

I rode the years with paper wings
The songs changed but the men didnt

I was along a dark path. Looked for the light

Strangers even after I should have stopped the wrestling

There Was only this
today
a perplex of pain and
searching.

You are my Knight of
Shining

The days of pain are
behind the trail of
memories.

You are my wind
and my salvation.

I Honor you.


Caroline Shank
December 10, 2024

I am Pandora. I have let everything escape.  My days are filled with searching. Mostly I look for you.

I can't gather the misguided
objects which surround me now. I
need to fight for the mountain
tops and silver lakes I knew
when we were young.

Are you still among the reeds
and shells of lost nights and
trodden days.  Memories dip
around me.

Say it isn't so, that you have
shorn your curls, pantsed your
youth and wiped the shy
calendar on the grass where
we talked into the night.

I try to return hope to the
broken  container but
it cuts my hands.  The
contents dive at me
like yellow birds in
a banana tree,

I am alone among the
troubles.  I am wrapped
in the moods of
silence.

I curve around the center,
gather your image
in my graying
locks.

Caroline Shank

I heard, the other day, a small
sound, a piece of gravely
noise.  To remember you
in the voice around the corner,
the right turn into the bathroom

where memory lay.

In the depth of a minute.
you came back.  I looked
to where you last called
to me.

The dementia still rooms away,
Your slanted smile lingered
like the Cheshire Cat's did.

All dressed up to cover the

bruises.

I began this poem to hold
you where the phantom
calls began.  To see eternity
in an hour and laughter has

it's own cry under the
lonely mask I wear.
I scan the room to
capture something as
ephemeral as yesterday

“When I was

young.’


Caroline Shank
4.4.24

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

I go where you go.  
I am  in your pores.

I am woven into the  curls
of your red hair.  I push memories
daily through your substantial
mind.

You are host to all the

years of our exile.  I am the
itch you wake to in the
long night.

I will be with you and
when you make love to
your wife I will be beside you.
It will be the secret you can
never tell.

We are the dreams in which
we play when night comes

and the cigarette smoke twins
memory forms, ephemeral
as the love which wraps the past
into the omnipresent

We.


Caroline Shank
12.3.21

You breathe in my heart a
song so sweet that I
swing on a cloud.  You
dance me around the
daylight and lay with me
during the night of dreams.

I will be on the side of your
red pleasure as you call
to me to be blessed by the
flavor of goodness.

We swing on a star.
You make me glad to run
with you, the wind, and
our song.

Together we fly over
mountains and lakes.
We grasp the promise
of tomorrow.

We are in the tumble
and the flight of wind
upward.

We are unflappable. Together.
we lay upon each other's heart
a solumn moment. The eternal
fabric of time.



Caroline Shank

The rhythm is whoopsie daisee. The
moment of the first bounce sets the
pattern of the wave.  It's like talking
to him when the rain poured on the
window. Up and down I tried to see
his face thru my tears.

It's like failing first grade and your
mother slaps you so your head goes
up and down and the wet drops on
your face are not enough to help
with the rocking motion.  It's later
on in your life that the attempt to
have *** on the water bed reminds
you of the day Aunt Ceil was there
and never a thought about why
my mother felt her world cracked
at my failure to please her. Their
conversation in French made me
dizzy.

I walked to the edge of the bed and
there were no dragons.  The waves
of the waterbed tried to hold me.
My back cracked and I rolled over
to try again to get up.  But you can't
have *** on a waterbed, in the
light of a single candle, The Eagles
playing in the other room.

I sank for love but love threw me
away.  My dried body simply was
no brace to the ****** of your moist
intentions.

The radio played on later in the
night.  Sleep drained me
and the announcer
played Claire du Lune…..
Through my sadness and my
loss I lie on the
bed waiting for you to come
back with the
****** Mary's.


But that was long ago and you
and the struggles in the night,
of the songs and the waves

are

gone.
.

Caroline Shank
5.20 2022

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

You placed a flower in my
hand. We looked at each
other in the haze.
I gave you a long poem written
with the heat of our breaths
last bloomings.

It was in the days of our beach
that we walked through to
the last door. Time
burned where the ink
of my song, snug in the
bend, sang its last
goodbye.

"Time was, red was the color
of afternoons pressed
against us. " I wrote that to you,  
a tribute to love and to laughs,
and to syllables.

I am 75 now and read with
the cat on my lap.  She
knows the art of songs
sung in the wind,
with every sigh of her lovely
brindle colored breast.

Tomorrow she will bring
me no nearer to you
who sang, once, to me
in the

russet sand.


Caroline Shank
1.29.2022

You're Doing it Again


You're doing it again,
that habit of pulling me over, the
kiss behind my ear where you.know
I will never tell. I watch you
as you try to lift me.

Uunwritten and unsung the sound
of your one hand clapping, my nod
that tells you to fire the cannons.
I am deaf now. I watch as
your familiar hand reaches away
for the face you tried to draw
so many times.

More than that it's the daylight's
fading fingers at my throat.
I whisper a melody you recognize.  
Tomorrow walks in on time every
morning and I wait to see if you
are willing with me or if your stroke
on my face will be the last mewling
at the edge of a lie.

Caroline Shank
April 28, 2022

Your epiphany renders my life
mute.  You walk through a
cloud of happiness I cannot
share.

I don't want the remnants of
your friendship.  I pick through
your past digging for you.
You left me alone and I can't
dance to our song today.

Life was wrong to plant your
belongings in my torn house.

I will forever disremember you
as if you were a song I never
understood.  You are ephemeral
as smoke on glass.  The sun
no longer streams from you.


Caroline Shank

Your moods are to me as is Mars
in ununderstanding.
You call and I am ready.
You bring the day's strata
of news.  There are layers
to us.  I do the moods as
an animal does clover in
a field unexpected.

I remain here
waiting,
Evergreen and u


Anonymously
I remain…



Caroline Shank
04.15.2l

You, Still There.

Picture me if you will,
like Minever Cheevy
leaning against the wall.

I thought and thought
about a kitchen you have
never seen,  my creamy
coffee, and the cat.

The blur on my face
is you. Your brown
beard streaked with
white..  No one can

make out the riddle
of you.  I keep singing
This is the dawning of
the age of asparagus.

You laugh and my face
crumples with the memory
of that, now nearly muted,
dear sound.

When will you be gone?
I scrub to no avail. I look
At myself, lost in the memory
of your death, standing by
for you to tell me something

about coffee.  

The blur
gets bigger as I rub

harder.

Your face clings to me
and I am lost

In the magic of your

song.


Caroline Shank
03.28.2024

You will never forget that first brush
of love.  The earnest breeze of a fresh
today, as if now were magic and
breathing was beyond explanation.

After which the future cannot  
draw from you the stream of
that song, the bell of a long moan.
For the days stretch on catlike
and clawing.  You understand that
this was the beginning of the
end of peace. A rip in the
fabric of time.

You will never forget the sound
called out by tomorrow that
never takes tomorrow under
consideration.  

To love infinitely is a lesson
beyond youth or midlife's
precarious adventure.  It is
the last bite of all experience,
the quintessential notes
of poetry.

Love itself escapes all the
ink fallen in the glass.
You are writing a
diary no one will
ever read.

The red hair of yesterday
changed into dusk and the
sun sets in perpetuity.

Caroline Shank

I was brilig in my slothy
days,
My combs dangled in the
fullness of ⁷time.

No particular fell but
were crushed.

I murmured to the sky's
yellow parts, home
of the slippery
curved words.

I walked the gel of
yesterday until &
therefore the ,,,,

Last lost number
was my age

A ziggy
On our

Love's shipped

trembling tune.

We

Kissed in the
fullness
and in the
ripeness

Of God's

Embrace.


Caroline Shank
MARCH 18, 20÷