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you ask for sweet lime
scent sour
I carve carefully
the seeds from the nectar
each white pip
tumbles on the floral saucer
as if dragon bones
divining your daily fortune.
I toss them to the crows,
palm-sized sparrows
so somewhere, perhaps
a tree will grow
and those limes
might actually be sweet.
 Jun 2020 JaxSpade
Caroline Shank
" There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio.
What is sacred?
Of what is the spirit made?
What is worth living for,
and what is worth dying for?

The answer to each is the same:
only love."

From don Juan de Marco



Where are you now when songs
get blown and dance in the turf
of memory?  I find the ends of
everyday strings tie the knots
knitted from songs I've heard
and poems I've written.

Four questions are unanswered
Don Octavio.  I travel over years
undone or never to be.  My mind
unknits the warm nights, the chirp
of insects, the swarm so thick
we could not make love in the
dark, by the lake.

No answers swim into my mind.
No questions fall to the ground.
My gown remains laced.  You
touched me under the ties but
you left me in the rain, unanswered,
unable to return to the capsule
out of which time begat those
four questions.  

Look for the answers under the
salt of my tears and find only
smears.  My tears are no reply.




Caroline Shank
 Jun 2020 JaxSpade
Sparrow
when you first kissed me
all starlight and fireflies,
crackling embers, trembling hands
our lips found each other and
coyotes howled in perfect time

for so long I thought that meant something about fate, about us

no..

the magic was just me
I am the one who grew up in that forest nurtured by the trees, running barefoot through the sun streaks

sitting quiet as the birds sang circled around me;
cradling hurt, that soft broken creature and sipping rain from the jewelweed

that power was my electric need wild in my veins, in the roots around me and in the wanton caress of breeze in my hair

you were simply
there.
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