The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede.

'mongst teddy bear shaped clouds,
and with friend whose eyes are as amber as honey sickles,
the sky melts sugar milk,
and whispers bubbles of candy cotton!
for the twilight knew much of the Wonderer.

with hopping rabbit bunnies,
and boxes with a fellow named jack inside,
the puppy-eyed child learned of many names,
and knew of many creatures--
O! have you heard of the bunna-easant?
the child would love of you to learn lots about it!

it seemed the Lord had blessed this young,
with naive heart and brave mind,
for you'd have to drink gallons of melted butter,
to be as sweet as he.

old nightmares beg for sips of the Wonderer's dove wings,
for the child knew of no such thing.
'what are mares of the night?' those eyes glistened toward the faeries,
with 3 sharp "ha"'s, they lean in and whisper,
'stay in your cradle, my young,' they'd wave their lolly finger,
'for there're no such things as those.'

for the white candy cotton was a favorite of the child,
same hue as the glowing deity he worshiped,
and brought the bouncing child through the embers of the day,
to hush the child to midnight play.

for time was awfully kind to this young,
as it pushes the child's golden swing,
following the young's silver eyes,
as they twitch with hunger,
at the appearance of the new critters it drew.

as cherry mermaids flicked the child through hearts of jelly,
and the fish from Stockholm 'plashed through chocolate lanes,
the Wonderer's taffy hair grew lengths,
and body took its outfit and changed!

the child basked--astonished!--and jumped from the tails,
leaving the mermaids and fish staring at one another,
with questionable marks and exclamatory minds,
'did we just lose our Wonderer?'

in shock, the deity's hair ruled short,
and no longer kissed the face of the 'Wonderer',
and bags filled blue light 'neath its eyes,
and rust reigned miles over the kingdom of orbs.

and the canvas had a streak of black,
'long its body,
and dried it lay,
unfinished of what was started.

for when the 'Wonderer' did decide to crawl 'neath silken shield,
and the deity's hair grew,
toss and turn, and turn and toss, the child did,
and the hair frizzled at tinted noon.

for in the Wonderer's brain,
an old horse awaits him,
with mane as black as goo,
and eyes as fierce as sandstorm,
the old horse awaits him,
and takes gallons from his wings.

and the teddy bear clouds turned to cotton,
and the fish melted by the amber,
and mermaids collapsed to bone,
and the golden gate said 'keep out, don't enter.'

for the bunna-easants had long since migrated,
and the sky turned a scared octopus,
for the candy bubbles had quieted,
and the child hung its youth.

but the Wonderer had long forgotten of his favorite candy,
and knew wonders of the mares of the night,
at cubic, he sits as blue light spills from bronzed eyes,
with the caffeine shots he jolts...


and the mares kiss him good-night.

How were they introduced to themselves within a flash of light? Enormous shots of humanness flying across the universe- only still inside the shapes of two blue eyes staring back at this vessel. Just molecules of flesh colliding into one another in a heap of colors and sounds we’d sometimes prefer to force ourselves not to hear. How do you keep yourself from exploding? Into a masterpiece of delightfulness pushed forward into the mouth, and sometimes only to be a breath, or a story dressed as a pink pillowcase on a childhood bedroom.

Sometimes it’s just as if there was never ending cold and never ending warmth, and between each other there we were with our noses pressed up against the glass.

People are only sometimes not shaped like beasts, are sometimes only chiseled into neatly marble statuesque ephemeral deities, and then into the tombs the book keepers go, into the ruins the shapes and sounds and colors disappear. Shattered into the vast expanse of vitrifying light, bouncing against your head my head, landing on the bedside table, the corner of your knee, into the knapsack with the broken zipper, far off into the jungle, or into the pantry next to the agave syrup, adjacent the espresso maker.

There I am loving you more and more, quietly raking my hooves against the dirt, reigning midnight shining orders of dusty moonlight plashed on the time of winter lake, courtiers in your centrifuge of melancholy, balancing the toes just inches below the surface of the water, where the skin shuffled into the brief sentimentality of being thrusted into the infinite transdimensionality of the human escape-

hands feet legs being ****** and pressed upon the glass. Infinite planes of man hurdling with fastidious dreamscape prejudice into the quakes and trembling, the  indivisible and unquantifiable desires of yore crushed as the envelopes bars break against the seams, then come the staples and the body’s tries at reattaching itself to this the trying table of familiar names, this the tepid jocular playing field. While the undulates are thrown into the academies. While the infrastructures topple over, and the sunlight froths upon the celestial satellites nearing and nearing to us, folded over until we wake up from our necks and into our heads and inside of our brains, until we pull the thread from our gems and count back through the catalog pages trying to find letters of words in other languages piecing together the wanton madness of yearning for you and sharing the sounds of a voice that’s forgotten its own triumph of revealing or speaking its name.

There is the room with the panels and the drawers. These are the wildernesses humming with the poison and quaffing the spit and drugs at the heady realm of human-like lightness, pals or even matter gives pause to answering you with what no understanding beeps or carries on forward, but rather bleeds, tormented, reaches forcefully, it has been nearly a quarter-millennia. Here is the start, the finish, here are the minutes, the hours, here are the streets, the beach, the bench, and all of life is ours, from the dawn to the crepuscular night. Here in a stone room where in black and white photographs spin their *** drives like mercurial thermoses bouncing of each other, dancing into the next world, or just fishing for alphabet soup with a wooden spoon.

Here it is. The short-sheeted bedroom linen collection, folded comforter in the closet. The bath water is still and hot. The sky is clouding up soon, but not quite yet. In a ball of light rounding bloom, comes the silent fans that’ve carried you. While of a breath the trembles sway, and take us far away from here.

Aspiration abounds in the silvered , drizzly days of December
With mournful dove that find banquet within my yard , below leaf barren Cottonwoods standing proud as if on guard
For every grain of sand secure in life's spiral purpose
For the communities that teem on the rain plashed surface

The yard.
The wide green yard.  
The rooster lifts his
trumpet to the Lord.  

There is the song
he practiced for the
sermon.  The choir off the
fence.  The Duck plashed
and the piggie counted
down.

The Serenade, his song
of Songs.  

The chicks wait
as they
we're told to do.

Billy's coming home.

The wooden fence is
cleaned.  
His flag draped.

The song
ready.

Billy fell in the ditch of
Unknowing.  

His war
over.  

The Rooster cries,

Taps.


Caroline Shank