"I'm an open book"
She says

Written in
code.

In my loneliness poetry gives me company.
7/2/2020

To feel something other
Than the feeling of falling
I hold my breath for fun sometimes

“Horses sleep standing up”
Horses are lucky like that

In this daydream I forget to fall asleep at night

I am the mother of my

youth.  I cry in places 

no one knows. 


It was the sunline to

Alabama that made

all the difference. 


I closed the 70's with

a bang. 


Today 

I enter this

decade mute.


My white hair falls

to the floor, my bent

back bent by the years.


I knew it would

end like this: 


alone,


by the tree. 



Caroline Shank

1.1.20

I failed at poppies last

year.  They turned to 

my soil and shrugged.


Red vessels with dreams inside.

Black and yellow inhabits the

cup inside delicately.


I watched them turn from

me in indifference

they, not knowing how I longed

to share their anodyne.


Caroline Shank

I don't just want to make plans,
I want to make them happen.

You speak of beautiful possibilities,
but that's where they end.

as tempting as this may sound,
especially if that somebody did you
wrong. You must rise on your own. A prone
body is not a sturdy steppingstone.