The crepe paper days of late June,all of them, the Summer of 74, are on
a spinning boat  in my old imagination. I have ridden the warm
days and lingered over a shared
joint by the light of a satin moon
for so long now I no longer shake
myself to be sure you haven't
gone, like a stone on the lake's shore,
which, when washed up on the moraine, dangles in a wave and is
gone again.  As with you

on a raining night, running for
someplace to hide.  Death almost
did part us.  As the marriage
of two souls, destroyed, died.

Lest you ever learn of my long, lingering, pain, know how I loved you
old as when we were young and
ragged with the raw edges of an
impossible dream. But you
left me and in the undoing of myself
I woke alone from the sting
of unbelief.

Sorrow does not preclude death,
but it is in the years of grief, searching for a way across the long embattled
memories,

that we die.



Caroline Shank