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

I'm looking for my husband.  He has
disappeared into some place inside
his mind, like a sea creature slides
into a coral bed.

Quick now, here he is for a moment
or an hour.  Like a Robin bobs in
the yard, he is beautiful in his song
before he vanishes into the sky,
flying above or around me.

Are his pieces forever gone? Will
I find a kiss behind my chair meant
for me alone? Will my sorrow erase
the years of love?

I will be brave today.  Tomorrow
I will be the coral he needs. A small
animal in a very large and
strange ocean. .

Caroline Shank
5.4.20

Forgiveness (2013)


I learned as a young young girl that there are things that are unforgivable, things that are inconceivable, except that they happened.  I learned that
no one cares
whether or not you forgive them, or her, or him.  Forgiveness is a NON issue, actually.

Life moves on, with or without our sorrows or bitternesses.  It just moves on.  We go with it, unless we choose not to.  Should we choose the "absurd" path of going on with it, it still makes no difference whether or not we "forgive".

Forgiveness is for God, whatever your relationship is to God.  Our job is to reach through the minutes of our days and to be the best or kindest, or not. There is no choice but  to "fare forth".  The pain of abuse or insult rides with us.  It just does. It's where we go with it that makes us, breaks us, or takes us on our way.  We become our best idea of ourselves because we know the difference.  All learning is from analogy.  If someone hurts me, do I not bleed (etc.).  Do I not know how to BE in this world with kindnesses because I have known cruelty?  Of course I do.

I have known extraordinary kindness and love.  I have known these things when I have least deserved them.  I learned how to love from the amazing love which has been shown me.  I have known Gratitude and it is the Mantra of my life in my last act.

Deception, in whatever its form, cannot cut us, unless it matters so much we are willing to dwell in some mire of useless opinions.  What is important to me is contained in a really quite small circle.  "The rest is not my business."   T.S. Eliot.

It is irrelevant, this idea we have about "forgiveness".  It's arrogance in extremis.   If someone causes me pain I really cannot do anything about it except to remove the source of it.

I am, beyond belief sorry for the pain I have caused others.   All I can do is fall on my knees in gratitude that the next minute or hour has pushed me into the next minute or hour and if I hang onto God I will go into the next flowing parcel of time with wounds that are healing, with sores that, Thank God, show me the direction in which to go to find, again, a place of peace,
people who do love me and whom I love.  
I have lived to know many many Blessings and Gifts.  (If I had waited to feel "forgiven" I would still be mired in pain.  It is the gift of Acceptance, unconditional Acceptance which sustains me.)

Grace is not found in concepts like "forgiveness" but in the constant acts of love.

It is not my place to Judge.  God knows this.  He most surely does

My fingers separate the air
between us.  Spokes.  A draft
through each digit whistles,
and I fall through, let go
of my bones.  The sound of
crying splits into syllables,
a vocabulary of fine letters
spills on the soft brown
palette of earth.

Art oils out of yesterday’s
memory.  I leave, erased
from imagination, evicted from
form.  
thought from wonder.  We
meet on the flat sandhills
of reflection.

This thought, which by and
large constructed you, contracts
in sadness.  The distance
between us is spread against
the whitest sky.  Your image
forms like brilliance from
stone.

They blamed me too but

they would not say so. The end came startlingly quick.  Though 

it took your whole life to get there.


Not me. You.  I only followed

that slate path up to almost.

This is out of order Judy.

You took the pills out of the

white slide-out box.  I 

remember that part.


They blamed you too, didn't

they?  Did you miss out on the

hospital, the doctors, the oh

such a bad headache?


Your kids grew up without

you.  Frustration fingered

them.  They came to know 

the Magic, the Myth.


Pace Requiescat Judy,

over the rainbow, 

we all go somewhere.




Caroline Shank




The movie "Judy" starring

Renee Zellweger

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

I'm oh so far away from
where you are.

I have climbed your mountain
and found only scree and granite
at the top.

Others have been here and left
a stone.  I have nothing to leave
you but an empty dish. A cold
meal once eaten is like a frozen
embrace.  Empty is empty.

I am walking away from your
promise like a cat leaves a
deserted dish.

No! Do not touch me.  
Touch only the breeze as
I leave.  Do not speak to me

I lie
in the air,
crying with the
gulls.


I mourne
Kaddish.



Caroline Shank

Karma brought me here.
I meditated long enough
to realize the sun beyond
the gloom.
I found in the **** heaps of
a life only crippled a piece
of light.

Karma is a whisper.
caught and warm.
It is the song
through which I dance.


Caroline Shank

Old and timewrinkled.
Thoughts ripened,
fall from me.  

You lean
on my vocabulary,
I felt your initials

carved on my fragile skin.

Torn syllables
scatter.  The floor is
bone and blood.

It rearranges and
once shapes are
spill
into a forgotten

well.

Syllables on a clean
tile. ,
writhe.

Caroline Shank
10.3.2023

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

Let me go Lord.
Save my memories in an old
coffee can. Tie it with string.
Give my bed to a homeless
woman who hasn't reached
the turning.

Take the white out of my hair,
and take my blue eyes too.
I have seen pain's
kaleidoscope. And
I was afraid.

Return what tenderness
survives to the flowers
lest I wilt them with
careless whispers.

Take me out of church
before the offertory.

Scatter the ashes of
a life sorely led on the
edge of the pond where
memories, like
sargassum, trap me.

Bring to me a dram of
whiskey.  Mix it with
the remains of my
life's last call.

Time Gentlemen.

My song is done.
Let me go Lord.
I am an image
wrapped in
Saturday.
.


Caroline Shank

Let Us Go

At great risk we go
through certain half deserted
streets.  The lights burn holes
in my contemplations.  The spine
of poetry is fallen and lies
spattered on the ground

Go with me. The vocabulary
inspired by the sea air will
carve runes in the granite.

We travel light. Our skin, like
canvas ingrained with words,
bleeds.

We drop to our knees in
silent supplication.  Sounds
paint where rhyme
leaves
trails.

There is no tomorrow.  


Caroline Shank

Lie To Me 2021

2020 leaves with the devil
whipping it on. But it's not going anywhere.  It is full of sound and fury.  

We scroll through the signs.
We think we will enter into
time's free zone. There are no
promises. Death drapes
from the sky.

Time past and time future
are only pages and lyrics
sung from one year into the next.
We will all cancel hope
by March.

I hear the witches chanting,
"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."


Caroline Shank


Notes:
The Four Quartets
Macbeth
Faulkner

Lineman

You ride the poles of my
electric memory.  I feel
your grip on the wires
of my need.

I mourne at last your
absence.  The pulse
Is faint now.  You will climb
the last time soon
to dry the lines, wipe
the torn wires

and stop the
pulsing
of
your

aching name.

The pounding code
of a life

overturned.



Caroline Shank

Is there a line in the
lives of you and me

which

when Crossed is like
the Rubicon?

Is it when
stumbled and
bruised

the phone
dangles,
held by conversation

that one is compelled
to wonder did I say
too much?

Love newly turned
there in the lathe
of indecision

‘Cannot bear
very much

Realty.

Mr Eliot talks of
lonely people.

Do I dare to Believe
That in you
is

Grace.  You shelter
Me.

Love lives after all.

Speculation saeculorem.


Caroline Shank
December 11, 2024

Long ago, miles and miles
ago,  you'd think I'd have
forgotten.  I remember so
many things.

I've learned that a tree down
still remembers its first leaf.
That the moon remembers
its first sunset.  I've learned
to understand then, that the
first beating of your
existence on my heart
remembers you.

Send me a signal that I
may see the first fragments
of your hand in mine,
the first dance in the
dark, the first look
we knew as always.

Let me not go without
one signal that you knew,
once, the colors of my
name you whispered
on my skin that night
you said goodbye.

The years have frailed me,
but not so much that I
could not relive that
sole and singular summer.

Caroline Shank

Long days.  Night slithers through
the door and I reach for you.
I believe in the wisp of
twilight, the smell of dope
and your arm around my
shoulder. The cross we bear.

The map of night is written
and I must go.  Never, the
tears.  I stare at your mouth.
We kiss the chalice of each
others love.  The mass of
yesterday sanctified a long
litany of love unanswered.

I hate the sound of the bells.  
I am brought to my knees. An old woman genuflects, A tear falls.
I confess my sins but never
you.  

You, you belong to the
dusking dreams.  

Caroline Shank

Realization begins with a grassy
patch on the cheeks.  A loosening
chin.  Our eyes tear
a little in the woven years.
We get older, better.  We stop
weeding.  Time is represented
by the passage of linear
rows.  Memory, imagination and
the strings of movement flare.
Answers streak the imagination's
runways.  We used to be whatever we
were in those early youthful afternoons.
Now the flowers are loose and confident.
We plow the past in conversation.

Look at us.  Our age signs
the geography.  We rise from
a packed landscape, determine
the motion of the earth.  The
winds of the last forty years
blow from behind.

We form together.  
Clouds gather us in.
We raise flags.
Our answers are on the
breezes of the past.

We sing.
Our anthem is
a song
for the ages.


Caroline Shank

I'm looking for my husband.  He has
disappeared into some place inside
his mind, like a sea creature slides
into a coral bed.

Quick now, here he is for a moment
or an hour.  Like a Robin bobs in
the yard, he is beautiful in his song
before he vanishes into the sky,
flying above or around me.

Are his pieces forever gone? Will
I find a kiss behind my chair meant
for me alone? Will my sorrow erase
the years of love?

I will be brave today.  Tomorrow
I will be the coral he needs. A small
animal in a very large and
strange ocean. .

Caroline Shank

It was in the early spring, as
I was just waking up, I realized
that the day had lost its colors
and I was blinded by the loss.

There were shades of gray,
many tones of dun and some
paler lights where sunlight
tried to pierce my eyes, to
no avail.

I mentioned this to you as I
turned to face the empty pillow.
You were gone and nothing
I could do would bring you
and the pallet of colors
settling back in place.

I walk the city streets
unidentified.  I am unseen
in my gray dress.  There may
be activity but there is no
sound.  I float like a ghost
past your house.   I remember
when we lived there, before
the catastrophe.  

You asked me if I loved
you and I, rendered mute
by the enormity of your
request, could not mumble,
though I longed to shout
YES YES YES.  You took
me for a fool in my unthroated
response.  I became a ghost
then doomed to walk the
city's streets, a ghost of
unforgiven silence.

There is no one at home
today.  I lie supine in
my sorrow, in the bleak
gray, and all my tomorrows
crawl flatly to my grave.

Oh do not be tricked and
think me abused for my
vocabulary.  But think
of me unbounded by
the light.  Extinguished
by the loss of a sentence.


Caroline Shank

I'm going now,
you can call me
at the number
here.

I am one with the
once me never
again remembered.

I'm the mother, the
grandmother and
the, now, widow.

Whoever said i should
give thanks left no
calling card.

No hello, no goodbye,.

Buddha, he of no
regrets, spent his
life ignoring the pain

of even the women.

He did not say give
thanks, he said be
still.  For eight
years he sat.

Christ said He was
not of this world, so
no wisdom from
the Christian Miracle
of the World.  He is not
talking to me now.

The Rabbi stays alone
In a Shtetl, or however
it is spelled.

I lived sans companion,
no being to give me
permission to inhabit
this or any body.

My music
was lost. I played songs
over your name.
I dont know what
that means
My love.

I  lay in
this tangle of
placques
and convolutions

on the grass
of your words.

You tell me
now

that love always

was your

Song.



Caroline Shank
11.8.2024

Love melts like chocolate on a face
on a hot Summer day.  You can't
capture it because it drains down
your lips to tomorrow.  

Love falls to the ground and colors
the grass a burnt orange.  The color
of my  heart when you left me
without sound.  

Words unsaid smear.  
Unrecoverable sounds of
midnight kisses elude.

Love remains in me,
before you ever left.

How do I say goodbye
to nothing in my hands?
The silence of
your leaving drips
as you
melt away.


Caroline Shank

It's not the fault of the stars,
literature or my mother,
The vague statues
The crenelatted fringes
Of half remembered
conversation that rest
in my imagination .

I look for, in you,
the long shadows of
memory scrolled on
the sands of literature

This
poem,

These choices,
       unfold.

         Love

recapitulates.


Caroline. Shank
10.28.2023

Your crotch seared into my
afternoon.

If you must wear shorts on your
fat legs please pity the members
of your audience.  

Restaurant's wooden warm
summer tables,  A patio for
my pleasure.  When in you
came. I never saw your face
until the squirming crotch
across the nearby table,
where you sat, friends like:)
you who couldn't see the
dance of fat falling out of
your shorts.  The camel
toed and the chats of friends.

Poured & drunk with no
where through the
sorry exhibition.

Caroline Shank
July 23,  2023

(A portrait of a Lady
brushed across time.
A fragment of life one
afternoon in a poem.)

She drops through your
memory like music from
a farther room.  Her death
is filtered.  Colors
are flowers on the grass.

You are a prism or a vessel.
You come and go.
Time goes into stone.
Pain is a fossil.  It will
be here a billion years.


Caroline Shank

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

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

Midnight slouches to
A Manger in a cold straw
barn where He is born.

Caroline Shank

She is not gone. You have not
lost her.  She is transformed
into shine and glow and into
star stuff.  You are part of her
in some way that glistens in
the Universe.

Death is only a segment of the
cycle of which you are the
best part.  Her laugh rings
around you. Her love
transfigures you.  Listen.

The tinkling of star songs is
for you.  The sparkle in your
eye is her. Be aware that
death is a tap over your
shoulder, a smile in your
mind.

You have touched a miracle
of which you are a player.  There
is no way into tomorrow.  Today is the way to love her forever.

Today is always.

Caroline Shank

Morning drips in like coffee.
I think of you. It is the
hardest time.  I begin the
day in sips. My tongue
burns with greed.

You seep in through the
slats of my sleepy windows.
The day starts with memory.
Your red hair curls
around the sun.  I reach out to
touch you.  I want to kiss
the blue of your eyes across
the table.

I, sadly, drink the dregs of
my morning, wash the azure
off my face and dry my tears
to carry me through to
tomorrow.

Mornings drip in like coffee.
I think of you.

Caroline Shank

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

"Morning has broken". Every **** day.
Branson is about to fly into the sky. Fauci
tries to get politics out of healthcare.

But you, you are young and strong,
fine and holy in my eyes.  I am due
to leave soon. You are forever 22.

I saw a picture of you recently. It felt
like withdrawal.  Don't look for me  
I am unrecognizable
In my old age.

I am my name spelled backwards.  
My broken mornings travel and
I am uncircled.  I have chosen not
to be and at some
point won't.

If you must come to me, come in the break of morning when the cat is
kneading me and I long for you.

Caroline Shank
7.11.21

I did not do that. The blotch
is the size of the sun
Methods of communication.
Failed mornings.

You saw the results of my
conversation before I did
Information quarreled with
meanings.. What should
be is not a reason to be.

Again the day begins with
prayer.  The end of prayer
cannot be its beginning.
The early morning empty

verses die of loneliness.
I die of repetition, of
stomach crunching fear.

I cannot find the night
in the car, the ******
shorts, your silence
drills me a lobotomy.

All this be the ends
of days and thought
moves slowly
backwards.

Caroline Shank
10.9.2023

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 archaic symbols of the dream
appear nightly stained on some
gigantic scrim.  There’s a battle
going on in one corner, a damsel
is at stake of course; her favors
his reward.  Somewhere else is a
monkey holding a tin cup and
pant-hooting at passers by.
There will be some trouble if he
doesn’t get his pennies.  More
I suppose if he does.

A man and a woman face each other;
she prepares bandages for his war.
The problem is she can’t reach the
victims he piles up.

Birds fly, horses fly, lizards slither
out of holes each with pieces of’
paper fluttering from their mouths.
The paper disappears leaving only
sockets without sound.

The dream is incomplete without the man,
standing still in the middle, his spear
pointed up.  He cannot move
and the tears on his face
are children.



11/11/80


CSS publications 2nd place winner 8/84  $25.00

Move it on over little dawg.  
I jump freight trains now.  
I sleep where i want.  
And I gnaw the souls of
better men than you

are.

I don't hear you anymore.
I write my own songs
and I wave away your
charmless melodies

alone.

I hum as I hear the
music of another

lover.

Move it on over
little dawg, the
big dawg moved
right

in.


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

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

My children were the mothers of my soul.
Each of them took me to places I had
never been.

When they were babies I learned
through trials the fears that croup
doesn't **** a 3 month old,
that my daughter wore Holly Hobby
and never told me she hated it.

I learned the Sears catalogue by
heart and always bought the 3 pack
of whatever they had on sale.
They never complained.

I was amazed that my daughter
spent her only 50.cents on an
owl for my collection.  Ruby lives
with me today.

They were mine until they
started school.  Then they
we're feral.  

My stretch marks crawl across me
like fuscia rivulets.  I have
left the itch of them behind.

I am a grandmother to strangers.
A mother to voles.  I bred
them out like songs I can no longer

hear.

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

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

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

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

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

I am hearing him
Pipe. The trembling
of my heart

Is the only sssooo
uuunnndd.

Caroline Shank
6.12.2024

Somebody burned the house
she said.
Frying steak.

Long live smoky kitchens
and those who are
called to the cause.

We are all molecules
in motion riding a
colossally failed experiment.

Non sequiturs abound in
my world.

Smokey kitchens.  
Metaphors.

I hang my head.
Slowly clear my
thoughts.

The kitchen remains.
the Abode.

There is nowhere

else

to go



Caroline Shank
9.26.2022

You asked me if I had
     Written
a poem today?

No I said.  You could not
have known that you are

     my poem.

My metaphors have changed.
You took my sad attempt’
'
to make of my life

     a story someone might
read, even for a moment.
Tonight I can tell you

     You are the meter
which steers the thing
I call love.

An unusual poem, filled
with all the things you are.

So I will know you when
     finally
we are met
and One.  

Caroline Shank
December 17. 2024

For Kinik

was a dark haired Jewish
boy with curls like black
streamers around his face.

He danced me
on stockinged feet.
We Lindyed to the music
until all the girls were snapping
fingers and tapping toes.

It was a long time ago.
this boy was willing in
my life.  He gave me
flowers and songs,

dreamers and
forever…


Caroline Shank
11.9.2022

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

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

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

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

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

a little jig, a show of knee

And

The

Last time

ever
    
     you

        called

My

     name.


    
Caroline Shank
6.16.2024

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