Many years ago

    another place,
                        another time,

I felt the beating of your heart,
beating together with mine.

The starlight
    on the water,
         the glow
            of the full moon,
               I remember us,
                  the melody
                     of our eternal tune.

Scents of the Magnolias,
the soft feel of our kiss,
the love that was invoked,
   true everlasting bliss.

Whispering breeze melodies,
waking with you each morn,

     ultimate love,
                    strong and true,
forever
           with you reborn.

Forever our love shall linger,
no amount of time can undo,
   even in the vail of death,
I will forever remember you.

Many years ago

another place,
                    another time,
the beating of your heart,
beating together
                     with mine.

Another Place, Another Time......
~

How vain
     ,thin the
         Paper skin
Coarse, now, built
  Through years of pen and brush
           Dabs and strokes of scent and skins
           Of sights ,  sound
     smell of rosebuds melding.  
          lips wrote thick upon the canvas
turned from micron thin
  into impact on a ground layer upon
layer deep where senses melt all
      Into one  
Bright some bold, a grey that holds
          A mystery of depth,
     Wealth unsold like souls
        remembered loves you'll
            never lose, or
                 grow  old

Is it ok to be crazy sane
Or insanely norm
Or has the path narrowed where
You must step foot for foot in the path?
I mean, I go off at times wild dont
Never hurt nobody I do it alone
I things  question like nobody does
Nobody I know so i close off
And where is that line drawn
I look only line I see is middle of the road
Even that changes from dashes to solid lines from one of them to two in places
And you see I see everyone knows
If you cross them there's hell
To pay
I dont always traverse roads though it was an analogy
I suppose the asphalt and heat got to me
Serious now
Who can help
A pastor a preacher a witch or a belt
I'm open to suggestions ive searched over and over

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