When you touch my skin
I feel it so deeply
That the salt in my oceans
Separate from the water

~
Storms make grey the sea
And erode the surface of the shore

Cold resentful icebergs
Outside my window
A field of sinking liquid caskets
Closing in on me

I hear the sound
Of toy pianos underwater
Remnants of their music keep
Washing up on achromatic beaches

Songs that made love shine
Have fallen into shipwreck
A missing charter's rusted hull
Casts the one color heaven allows

Storms make grey the sea
And erode the stages of the sun
~

All your tears are fresh in my mind
Yet, I wait for every clear morning
Wrestling the desolate storm without hope
Hearing closely for sight of some longing

I remember when we watched the rain
A rogue wind hit us and we were the same
But every rush of the waves drew us further apart
We tried to justify the isolation because help never came

What can signal some change of heart
The sun and Earth are quite estranged
We are birds of the sky worn by the gusts
We're enduring the storm's eye in August

It's October, I listen to the beat of the heart
We have seen worse times in the past
Moving ahead from our last, first to last
To start a fire, you have to light a spark

An onion can grow from a seed,
            From a tiny place and start its  life  
                                                   from the beginning,
                                                      ­                         to its end.

Or an onion  can grow from a broken piece of itself.  
           If it’s tended to carefully
                                and the conditions are favourable.
                                                                ­          And go on again

  To begin again.

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