Mapled
Syrupy
Red Leaf

Perfectly

Framed
On Grass

Purgatory

I forgot about Purgatory, the bus
stop of Catholic needs must have.
The clamor of prayers, the knee
in genuflection.  

Tomorrow I will go to mass.  I will
arbitrate with the voice in
confession.  To die in mortal sin
is my childhood's torment.  The
black robes of St. Patrick's priests.
Early mornings
with my Dad

The brown robes of the Franciscan
who stole my sins in high school.
I wasn't done with them.  I wore
pants and that angered him.  I was
not unholy just skirting the borders
of adolescence my own way.

But I digress.  Purgatory with all
those flapping carers preparing
my way to God Finally and
Absolutely. My prayers tabulated,
my envelope is unsealed.

I am old now and return the
Purgatorial wicker plate to the
transept under which lay
the dust of the unforgiven
travelers.
        Strangers in a strange land..  

The curtains whisper.,
I say penance.

Ten times.

Oh My God I am heartily… .

Amen.


Caroline Shank
10.17 2022

Italics Robert Heinlein

Death exits the vomitorium
on
     the left.
The chalice rattles.
     The king is dead.

(It  slammed into my head
     one night,
         when you were sick )

Before the circle it was said
   you
       were handsome and guileless.

(You attend again, your father, locked in
     in the sleep that has only one hand.
Tomorrow will solicit your stillness.)
        

My legs, old, are stumble, are
     shaken. I wobble

like a child.

(Watch the hands that hold
     yesterday.  Grip the rope. )

Wrench away.  Struggle.  I'm

tears,
     are bricks,
       I  tear my face.

You, beloved,
     gone in the morning.

Flowers, to the sun,

          turn

into your celestial orbit,


          burn.



Caroline Shank
10.16.2022



RIP Jim Shank
5.10.1938 to
5.03.2022

Base Camp

Unseen from here, the
summit, in a cloud, anchors
the landscape.

It is said there are corpses littered
among the crakes and crevices along
the pilgrim's path to atonement.

Let me walk among the thoughts, the
footsteps, the crawling supplicant's
prayers to reach the place where
climbers found the unimagined,
the windblown, the face of God
that insists on another

chance.

Let me be where you are, the
subside of a mythic mountain,
among the survivors who
recovered

love in the scree of

yesterday.


Caroline Shank

Senryū one

Escape from Haiku
short long breathe in time
breathed out longing to go live

Senryū two

Seed fall fruit feed pigs;
passenger pigeons,
fertilized this forest, you know.

Senryū three

Discipline, science,
since some time ago,
ready readers write old seed.

Shell cracks wrapped in Knuckle

Squeeze the oily
Memory
Through Flesh of Seed.

In this Kernel the Beating
Heart of Being
Expresses
From Land to Stalk from
Barking Stem to whippet waving Leaf.

All my Head exposed in
Creamed whorls of Walnut-
The Apple Pip of Manhood shown
Only to Woman