Someone
swears

"We'll
never see
the likes of this
again"

The day
withdraws
exquisitely...

Charisma,
only evening has,
coagulates
in orange bloods..

dancing by the castle turrets-

scarlet mixing fuchsia pinks

sinking into psyche ...



How joyously
we raised our arms
raised our arms and sang,

sang deep into the starlit mirth
of everything we ever were

and ever dared to be...

You are the whooshing woman
       spewing out idea after idea,
            in a boardroom meeting full of men,
              who pay big bucks for your easy genius.

Your constant shhhhh,
    remains the greatest reminder  
       to stand silent,
          it is the wind of your water,
            that carries fish to a new life
              or the waiting beak of a gull.

And as your water topples to the side,
     you become nature's velvet curtains
       forever drawn to hide secrets
         never meant for human consumption,
           it is there, where you declare victory
               over the paradox that is earth.

Has anyone ever told you  
    your movement is your stillness?
      Your calculated charm of "go"
         provides anchor to the
            nebulous change of man.  
    
Sometimes I can hear
      you in airplane cabins
              and in evening traffic,
                 when I am really trying hard
                     to return to nature.

But most of all I hear you in relation,
      between two hearts beating with purpose,
          within a rapturous conversation
              about human chemistry.

I'll admit, I have tried to carry you,
    but you are too slippery when wet,
       and you are always bursting with
         significant moisture.

I write in runes.  I mean to
leap the alphabet.  The orbital
spin of time and me dizzy and all. .

I will write you tomorrow,
shake the mica off my
thoughts.  You will not
walk with me among the
glacial shores of thinking.

I will return a fossil of
millions of years,
along the edges
of meaning.  I am not
unfamiliar with your pace
along the beach where i
lie so still.  It's why I will
write tomorrow when my
heart has ******

in the sun.  

I don't see you
coming anymore to the sandhills of
Poems.  It was always
difficult to reach you through
the tangle of my sclerotic

heart.

Tomorrow I will be a fragment of
loving you.  I will hold the
thought until it fossil
freezes and I will lie on the
Beach of Remembering,
washed by eons of

poetry.  I will write you
but all you will hear are the

echoes
of forgetting.


Caroline Shank