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

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

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

on our faces

blows over

the carved vows

on the birchwood

tree.


Caroline Shank
April 2, 2023

I feel the weight of nearly a hundred moons upon this suggestive flight deck, overtaken by transfusion in a high formation rhythmic way. Fluorescent headphones—neon red, rotate around neutral zones. Push in, pull out. Swim under the pink, towards some aerobatic link to mother earth. And still, we're not in orbit yet. Your dawning glow you blow into my lungs. Will you catch me if I blast away?

Trust the sun (she says)
her first rays when creation was young
and God's window opened outward
as a place of worship
born to be breathtaken
daylight imploring for companionship
and bleeding into itself
as it bleeds into the worshipper.

She notices that her own taste
in repeating patterns doesn’t mesh
with the apparently similar
patterns in Drakensberg
they obey a different logic, and the friction
between them generates
a fascinatingly ambiguous color.

Tinctured cathedral of time passing
on its first layer of stairs...