For want of breathless views,
Landlocked seemingly
Between crests of
Rolling hay green grass and numbing tedious pines
Lost like a wolf who ventured too far
Unto the oceans beach and knew
His quest was hopeless,
How about we venture forth imaginating then how do I guess what wolves do speak
When obvious the feelings of creatures must
Be holier than our lust and treason
But tarry not
In self-denial your eyes when cornered,  
Don't deny,
Are just as tortured vile
As any wolf
Or creature
Threatened

Will you be my Valentine?  Next
year of course.  When the red and
white polka dots star out the
night and I am confounded
with your beauty.  

Why haven't I written, you ask?
I have dumped my life's colors
onto pages
and into notebooks for you.
I am a woman of many words.
I describe events in the shells and fossils along the beach we walked when we loved each other.

I am engraved by the events
of your stone hard meanings.
I wrap your adjectives in the
filo dough which lines me and
through which my delicate
remembrances filter.

You are the spoon with which I am measured.  Myself into your coffee and cream, you into my death defying
dare to life.


Caroline Shank

I don't want you to find me
in these later years.  I can't
cry anymore when I think
of you.

We were young in the music
of our age.  We danced (so
closely) to "Me and Mrs Jones"
The top room of the familiar
bar where we were all alone
except for one couple playing
pinball.

I'm broken finally. The white
hair, the pounds padding me
like Bart on the field.
I'm broken in my heart, the
one place you only have touched.

I am broken in the days and
nights.  The flesh colored
clouds slide over us
as it did so long ago.  
I can't sing even
to the  songs we loved
as each one of us moved in the
roiling grass.  Shattered, I
am veined with the silver of old mirrors.

Stopping by the road in the
summer rain I sigh the
loss of many things.  Things
chipped now and cracked.
My face falls, like shards of
failed glass.  I
cry out for you.

Words are frail bones.
I fail to reach them although
they stain my  
breaking heart.

As my husband slips in
the mire of Parkinson's,
he will not know me
very soon.

I write about you with
capricious longing. The
touch you gave  of
seeing me home.
The Marijuana was not
that strong.  

Don't cry for me
Alabama. I am
here where you
left me.




Caroline Shank
September 15, 2021


This is a new poem I am trying
to know.  A broken memory
that slides up and down
the heart of me.

Everything reminds me of that short
summer.  The clouds form in ancient swirls of fine candy.  Stick candy.
The Wisconsin breath on my
neglected face still summons the
memory.

Proust has already penned his memoir.

I have as yet been unmined.
You remain like an effigy
on the razor edge of sanity.

I feel the hot hand of our past
rub along the night we
loved and smoked and
loved some more.

The days we were loosed on
the city we held the yellow
breath of anticipation.  

We walked

into night when the dark
fallen Angel laid her hand
on times cruel cudgel
and struck us apart.

The music I hear is the
remaining notes of a still dark
lift of dance.

The touch of you is a reply
in only every breeze.

Caroline Shank

Business on
Forest Street how quaint,
the merchants displaying their wares
Mid 19th century like,
On sidewalk displays of commercial
Renaissance,  essence of Renoit
air
Of the Bard
Touch of town folks fresh from the hills
In wagons long dresses cowboy hats and wood
Silks and satins of bright colors
And patterns
In celebration  of how good
It was
Back then
Says horses and slop bucket smells, gaining the footing of paved streets,
Over septic systems carrying the
Saintly smells of yore underground
So efficiently, yet
We yearn
As an old man
I know yearning, for days gone by
Now golden
Were it tinged glowing gold by my mind decades old or by
My eyes cataract and unfocused,
I do not know.
Why I would like
To know.
At my age
Is the future still
So far off?

I'm so antivax maskless, I'm petitioning the courts to remove my polio and smallpox, diphtheria and whooping cough, and measles Vax from my *** immediately.

I want to be free of serums, free
to enjoy paralysis, coughs and fevers like God made me.

****  my glasses are fogged up.
Wait a minute.

Freedom is an ignominious thing

To have loved a cat.
Amongst my accomplishments this ranks highly.
So, I gave freely. Understanding the rewards might be fleeting.
Yet I loved whole. True.
The entire monty.
And there i paws
A cat hair in my eye on lookout for every stray
Who happens by

Seeking....



Nor, is it folly, to have served their whims upon a silver platter, when rewarded only by their regal indifference. For, there comes a time when you feel a bit down, or you are sad, and lo, her catness rubs your leg, or turns her head upside down and let's you rub her belly.
And the ultimate when on a dark gloomy night she consents to the rare kiss on your lips. And rubs her side along yours. Softly