Sitting cross-legged at your site,
dreadfully admiring the grass clumps
growing disrespectfully over your plot,
as if time forgot to stop for you.
Your neighbors are encroaching closer,
becoming a sea of graves,
You’re blending in with the rest.
Crickets and birds keep chirping
while the excavator cuts through
my thoughts digging new plots.
Time and life just keep progressing
But without you, I’ve stopped.

MOVING HOUSE

"Shhhhhhh!"
Uncle shushed me
"See that there now!"

I looked at
the house and the house
looked back at me

"That wee house wasn't
there yesterday!"
Uncle whispered

"Really?" said I
"Really!" he said
I stared at it

"No! Don't look
at it or
it might...!"

"Uncle never
finished what
"...it might. .  !"

the house it seemed
terrified of being caught
crept back into its shadows

it crouched
by the side of the road
as if at any moment

it would up sticks
and do a runner
at great speed

we walked on
warily by
careful not to scare it

"Let sleeping houses
lie!"
Uncle warned me

I not being
used to countryside
I was blinded with green

so that when
Uncle brought me
a different way

I was
none
the wiser

"See what did
I tell ya!"
the house had gone

"That wee house
likes to
roam about!"

and then the next day
and "Jaysus!"
wasn't the house back

Uncle kept this up
for a week or more
bamboozling my mind

and for all
the summers of me
being 3 and 4

I heartily believed
in the moving house
and its comings and goings

Uncle smiling
at my innocent
belief in him

*

Auntie Nellie used to always give out to Mikey and with always the same words"For God's sake Mikey will ya stop filling the child's head with nonsense....can't ya see that he believes everything you say!" Mikey would always smile and say his catchphrase: "Be the Hokey!" It was his stories such as this made up on the spot that seeped into my imagination and I soaked up my Uncle's storytelling through emotional osmosis. He made me the poet I am today.

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)

you wrap the stars around my shoulder blades
place the night on my lips, listen for summer
and whisper day-moons and gothic hills,
bend like the willow dreams of old, sad songs.
your ghost is the rhythms of a sigh,
is a planet stunned by the dark-lashed sea of skies,
an enigma where the pools empty turquoise
and topaz, where we fall - how we fall.

Four years elapsed,
Since the world collapsed,
And I still can’t delete it,
Delete it from my head.

The concrete impaction,
One solitary action,
From able to chained,
Chained to his deathbed.

And I’m disturbed by the memories,
Sad for the suffering–

                For his suffering,
                For their suffering,
                For the collective rippling of suffering…

Tragedy inspires, I’m told,
But its message is lost upon me,
Blurred in darkness,
A stop-motion picture,
Haunting me, frame by frame.

Homing in on this harrowing loss,
I find my focus will never sharpen,
Just like he will never come back,
And so, I’m left fixating on that which
I can neither fully remember nor fail to forget.

If I could transcribe behind your eyes,
I’d see the times they’ve sunk and cried,
The shadows of pain you’ve held inside,
And all the needs you’ve been denied.

You don't speak much on heartache,
Or insecurities you can’t shake,
Breaches of trust, being treated unjust,
Are there fears left concealed, undiscussed?

If I could dive inside your lovely mind,
Swim through your veins, us intertwined,
I’d find exactly how your heart perceives,
Study the language your love receives.

Maybe it's the 'I love you's throughout the day,
Or these poems, though limited in what I can say,
Even a warm meal after work on a cold day,
Or perhaps it's those weekends we spent away.

Mapping responses to our conversations
And how you react to my love demonstrations
I’m looking for clues, all sorts of indications,
Fine tuning the way I love with my observations.

I’ll narrow in, long as you continue to share
Your reception of love–please make me aware,
For, finding your love language is all that I care,
I’ll express my love, I solemnly swear!