Look at me when you say goodbye
Not the red-fire approaching end
This was just a dream
Now you are my memory of love

Here I am doing both
Living and writing
Healing and grieving
The multidimensional complexity that life holds
All wrapped up in the swirls if my palms
My body holds so much time
Lived out
Not every scar is sad
My white lines like the layers of a tree
You can see the growth

Do you remember the bygone seasons
When I was winter
When you were spring

Are you budding again
Like awakened trees
Are you opening your eyes
To sunlight melting the freeze

My words have gone asleep and away
We each buried our dead
Stacked the rocks
Mourned, grieved
I felt for you, maybe not the right things
I hope you are gentle on yourself again
We both know I could forgive anyone's harshness but my own

You paint me as the wild one
So you can be the calmest man in the room
Calling yourself natural sunshine
So I can be portrayed as gloom

We are quite dark in the middle
That is where I go

There are words I hold in
Drafts rooted in the stumps of my fingertips
That may never branch into trees

I have a head full of bitter
change.  Shake me gently
or it will fall out.  Do you
like me enough to tally
the aged money?

You are a stream where
people go to pray.  The
Ganges of the soul.  Weary
of the candles floating on
the prayers of lesser sinners
you ask only for confession.

You send the lighted candles
downstream.  Forgiveness
is not for the weak, and
shy of life's detritus

you weary of all things that
I leave on the edge of
sorrow.  Oh! River of my
Old age why do you

need me?


Caroline Shank