You can't understand love

   you have first to live it, all else above

I used to work in a factory once with a lot of girls
One day the girls they were talking about this guy who apparently used to **** sheep
They called him a Sheepshagger
Of course being young at the time and coming from a rather sheltered background I suppose
I'd never heard of such a thing, and was well... amazed!!!
Hell I thought, you could really get an education listening to these girls
(I'm in with a fast crowd here)
I didn't know you could **** a sheep,
Just goes to show if you don't know about something you probably won't indulge in it.
Anyway, the girls went on "Typical men, disgusting, a bunch of animals, they'd jump on anything, no better than dogs"
The funny thing was, the way my mind works or turns things around
I couldn't help thinking
'But isn't it a poor reflection on the women of this town
That a guy would rather go out with a sheep
Than go out with one of you guys'
And then I thought, imagine your girlfriend bringing you down to a field
And you're standing there at the gate the two of you
And then she gives you the Big... the Big Ultimatum
"Choose!!! It's Me or the Sheep!
And you look at her with all that intensity and drama on her face
And then you look over the gate at the sheep grazing peacefully and idyllically in the meadow
You look at her and then back at the sheep
The answer to her question in the balance,
Suddenly a ray of sunlight comes down through the heavens
Illuminating one particular sheep
You watch in awe and think... it's... it's the Golden Fleece
You turn to your girl and say
"I got to be true to myself, to my Nature's promptings
Darling! I'll always love you
But those sheep their just so...so irresistible"
And with that you hop over the fence and start running after your favourite sheep
A picture of unbridled Joy and Happiness as you pursue your dream love.....

Y'know, just in passing, there's some very **** looking trees close to where I live
But you gotta be careful, yea! you don't wanna catch the old, the old dry rot.

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

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.

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?

That first night sky in the high desert
was fully unexpected, with no moon yet
the lighted canopy of brilliant heavenly
sparkling bodies appeared so dense and
near that at first view I felt perhaps I must
duck down so as to not bump my head
into a star or two.

City and town skies are muted by city lights,
only a few stars visible even on a clear night.
High Desert skies are so densely packed it
takes your breath away, you can sit for hours
with your mouth agape in contemplative
wonderment, mesmerized by the sheer vast
splendor of the heavens dense blanket of
shimmering lights out into infinity and beyond.
No telescope required.