I will take the truth from your lips
And kiss the pain out of it,
Till all that remains
Is our happy little lie.

I will take the love in your gift
And throw away the wrapping bit,
Revealing the gains:
Our happy little life.

I am reminded of your face
when the wind blows over me,
when the sun's light shifts
to summer.

We knew each other
in the solstice of our
lives once.  You turned to
me and the light streamed.

Remember me in that light.
My hair not yet quite white.
Remember me in the
while of time.  I was the
wine in your glass's
reflection.  You were
the glass in my
Waterford world.

Run to me.  But know I am
fragile, still afraid.
You left me in the rain.
Come to me now
in the sun
of your returning.



Caroline Shank

I dream too much.  I have an
imagination the size
of a planet.
I stay up all night, sleep
like a cat.  Watch movies
on the TV.

I sink and rise and
sink again. Dream
sporadically
of you.  

I think of
past loves.  
It's what getting

old does to me.  You are
the audience for my poems.  
Language is unspoken.
I doze until

Six A.M. when all
my senses call me
to beware.  The night
is hiding and my
thoughts fade into
daylight.

I am on the way
to yet another
dream.

You are the
music.

Tango me tonight?


Caroline Shank

We dug with bare hands
each to the other.  Sifting
minutes into memory,
language into clover.

We spread our hands
gave life a chance and
the Universe said Yes.

We haven't changed a
minute.  We share the
telepathy of souls,
the candles of passion.

Tomorrows infinite,
reaching into each
other,

roots entwined.


Caroline Shank

Afternoon


is when we made love
the first time. The only
time really.  It was the
shadow of four o'clock.

I remember your welcome
voice,  my shy
goodbye.

Every day I wait by
the window.  Your tan
coat and brown hat
disappear. You
vanish and I run
head long down
the years.

You fall from me like
grace.  Your face the
mold I make with my
hands each afternoon
at four o'clock.

In the window above
the lamppost I wait.

Everyday
the snow falls and
on my frozen
soul rests your
goodbye.


Caroline Shank
3.24.20

Prompt:. The word Afternoon.

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 left her
on the pale of an old wound. Just When She Needed You Most. It's
true that the world is a flat rockfilled
place.

For years she worked a new garden.
Now the songs
are warped and the plants
won't grow.

Her ramblings stutter.
But  offer
a small breath in her direction
and she dances.

Combien Monsieur for some air
you breathed, for a flower you
grew, flesh to the perfect
old dream?


Caroline Shank

.
Candles light the way to my worn
torn books.  I read every night.  The
covers loosened from the binding.

It is a fragile thing that I have come
here to write you.  I am a little out of
shape.  The company of great
writers intimidate me. I am wrapped around the stylus of an idea.  

In some way think of this as an
entry into my thoughts.  Are you
interested in the nocturnal rambling
of my old, my favorite phrases?

Something in me likes to hear you,
in your deep voice, read to me what
I write.  My imagination startles me.

The candles are burnt enough.  
You will not return to this library
which you began so long ago.

I write to you in my diary,
Harker, words you fling from the
runaway carriage window.

I will never die and I will look
for you in my books forever.

I listen to the wind through
the pages.

Caroline Shank