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

What have I to say to you?
whose world is a spinning
Inn?  I want to stay awhile
where you are the boatman
for lost and lonely waifs.

Treasure me with your song,
I will soothe you with my
sighs.  Sing boatman?

Bring me
to my knees.

Sounds are the oar
with which I stay

Forever.

Caroline Shank
11.25.22

(Nothing happens unless first we dream.
Carl Sandburg)


Wet leaves leave traces
on the stony path to
Dreamland.  I Have
slippery intentions.

Tomorrow will decay these
thoughts.  Mind's tricks
pretend that the wet
leaves slip

up.

The dream ends.

Nothing
happens.


Caroline Shank
10.11.2022

There were always men
when I was a young
girl.  
Summer men.
Big
as trees,
loud as
thunder.  
Bright,
soft
round
eyes.

I loved the men of
summer.  They
breathed
in
warm
breezes

When I was young
summer men wore
soft
brown
skin.

They
glistened
sunlight.

Oh when I was young,
I did love
their
rub on
my tan
hands.

Now
I am
oiled by
memory.


Older men
are
happily
in
disguise.


Caroline Shank

Your early inborn magic did not
fortell the whirls and winds
of the future.  The shine of
youth ended in turbulence.

Dismania, like fingers, touched,
you.  Ivy on brick, the tendrils
pierced.  Walls of
uncertainty nourished
and you, welcomed the

future.



There were no tomorrows.

Pulling you through the
mirror of myself you tore

into
uncertainty.

No Magi, not even
with gifts of surcease
brought by the force

of love
released you.


Still the running child
you crash into a future
whose spiders claw at you.

Tomorrow waits
protected
by your addiction.

Reach into the future
all you want,

you cannot tear the
crawl of your destiny

away.


Caroline Shank
10.13.2022

You placed a flower in my
hand. We looked at each
other in the haze.
I gave you a long poem written
with the heat of our breaths
last bloomings.

It was in the days of our beach
that we walked through to
the last door. Time
burned where the ink
of my song, snug in the
bend, sang its last
goodbye.

"Time was, red was the color
of afternoons pressed
against us. " I wrote that to you,  
a tribute to love and to laughs,
and to syllables.

I am 75 now and read with
the cat on my lap.  She
knows the art of songs
sung in the wind,
with every sigh of her lovely
brindle colored breast.

Tomorrow she will bring
me no nearer to you
who sang, once, to me
in the

russet sand.


Caroline Shank
1.29.2022

To be acutely that is, to be, alone
is a topic phenomenologists
ravish.

The dialectical imperative at
least requires two souls
reaching for the strands, like
light waves, the flash food
of the Universe.

Tomorrow I will meet the son
of Master Albert and the laps
of the twirling firmament will
strike dumb the song of
gods.

Mea Culpa Mea Culpa,

Tomorrow you can drain
the swamp behind The
8th street oak and the
copulating frogs will scamper
away, two by two

I digress   To be me is
always to be

alone


Kyrie eliason


Caroline Shank
10.11.23

You will never forget that first brush
of love.  The earnest breeze of a fresh
today, as if now were magic and
breathing was beyond explanation.

After which the future cannot  
draw from you the stream of
that song, the bell of a long moan.
For the days stretch on catlike
and clawing.  You understand that
this was the beginning of the
end of peace. A rip in the
fabric of time.

You will never forget the sound
called out by tomorrow that
never takes tomorrow under
consideration.  

To love infinitely is a lesson
beyond youth or midlife's
precarious adventure.  It is
the last bite of all experience,
the quintessential notes
of poetry.

Love itself escapes all the
ink fallen in the glass.
You are writing a
diary no one will
ever read.

The red hair of yesterday
changed into dusk and the
sun sets in perpetuity.

Caroline Shank

Dear, You Know Who You are.

Bless me Father for I have
sinned.

It has been twenty four
months since last i

looked
in the mirror.

Forbid me not the long
vowels of my
Poems, the

caesura of love in

the Winter in Wisconsin.

Summer's in the
Lake.  There's fire in
my old dreams

And you.


Caroline Shank
4.26.2024

Philos:

The question of

existence has
recently fallen into
the house of

insignificance.

You have no tiles to hang,
no metaphysics to
conjugate.  I am substance.

Actuality.  The froth of
conversation opened
into the accident
of birth.

Remind me. of last
night.  The
bedsheets are stretched.
The conversation of
sheep, grazed on
the syllabed

Of significance.

We love in the green
Over lament of
Civility.

You are the brand.
I am the name
that shail

never be

Spoken

Caroline Shank

What will you share with me?
You who have been gone so long?  Will you speak of
everyday things?  "Caroline, the
weather has been so cold."

Will you touch me on the hand
that once curled around you?
"Caroline you always had
such soft skin."

Will you sing your songs to
me again? The notes of which
lay down their sound on my
lonely face like kisses.
"Caroline do you remember
how we danced that night
to the music playing on
the revolving colors of
the jukebox?"

Will you bring me
your Roses of Sharon for
all the years of desolation?

Will you kneel into my lonely
night of years of nights?
Will you share my tears,
all my fears, across the
darkening skies?

Will you take the evanescent
light and write joy in
my blue eyes?  
"Caroline do you still light up
at the sound of me
moaning your name?"

I will share your smile with
smiles of my own.
What will you ever share with
me in the flowered landscape
of imagination?

Will you share your thoughts
like petals thrumming on the
wind of your return?  
Or will I awaken
to the unslept on pillow faintly
smelling smoothly of
marijuana, in the raw
morning of remembering?

("Caroline!" the unheard of
to no one there.)

Caroline Shank

The birds are back. Little leaf sized
flutterfings of brown refracting
movement to some rhythm heard
from beyond the canopy.

Today is a whisper from across the
yard. The daylight folds into evening.
Tomorrow waits under the sunspotted
green leaves.  Will you be there
when the day's linger or race into night?

Caroline Shank
3.15.22

That was before all the decisions.
Before the car was packed and
you drove with such a pain in your
knee.

That was the last time I was
thin and my hair was not yet
pink.

Before I knew you were around
the corner.  You were not yet
the last to set my mind reeling.

Tomorrow will see you wrapped
In the linen of your generation,
the symbol of a freed man.

Wallace Steven's predicted
you but I was not listening.
To be freed was not the point.
All that was before I saw the
exhaustion on my face.

Waylon Jennings here.
Full stop

Yet all my life foretold you.
The brave of you and the
blindness of my ever
singing anthem.

I leave you with s soft
flower

To

Wear

in your hair.

Caroline Shank
April of my discontent


4.20.2024

Will You Forget Me?

I am staring at the jagged rocks,
the dune of age,
The mica gleams,
I am involved with you
in some demon dance.

Your red corduroy is furred  
and plaid.
Tomorrow the world will end.
I will sleep in.  I will not
take calls.

I stutter through
the door into the
sandpits of memory.

Dear Lord,
We will not go gently.

We have secrets,
We travel
alone,

into that

good night.

Each of us
to remember….


Caroline Shank

I submit to you the plan,
the blueprint,
the perfect wedding
day.  

The storybook sun of
an early fall afternoon.

Church people in  purple
and white congregate.

Congratulations are petals
on the browning lawn.

It's September of a day
pulled from memory.

The church bells scurry like
living tones let loose.
A random exercise
in hearing.

The early mark on a white
wall's
lifeline scars my woman's
soul.

Death makes the day's ride
a long goodbye.


Caroline Shank

Feel the change of the
Seasons.  The light in
streaks on your arm's
red hair.

The wind, on a good
day, God's embrace.

Feel the change of the
Seasons amber tossed
curls.  The whitening
pelt, earth's embrace.

The nearby squirel uneasily
counts her chestnuts.  She
reminds the tree of
riddles.  What? Nonsense.

The tree offers only comfort,
a remainder of the turn of
the shadow's dance into
rest.

Walk thru the Pillars of your
imagination, feel only the
seasons past and to come.

Feel the change
sweeping the
cooling light under into
that drains winter whispers
to…

Stop the moment from
beginning its turn to and

away from the primordial
Image of

you in Summer's arms,
mine,

still willing.


Caroline Shank

Not everyone believes in Angels
but I do.  Sweet singing below
hearing, at the heart of feeling.
Angels are wide white lace
that enfold me in my deepest
sorrow and my highest joy.  

I trust the whirl and whoosh
of them. I catch sight of them
on the side of my eye when
I am not even looking

Angels announced the coming
of Jesus and His going.
They whispered to me the day
my children were born.

I see Angels in the look of loved
ones.  They flutter above my
every day and lay me down
to sleep at night.

I see Angels in the corridor.
sweetly singing homecoming
to patients and embracing
Angels sylphing through me
as I work.

And in our sorrow Angels hold
our faces where tears fall.  Angels
kiss our souls with love and gently
bring us home.

Caroline Shank

Song

I am a metaphor for your loneliness.
Rigged out in sunshine and crowned
with blue skies I am your looked for
ticket to the cotillion.  You never
saw me before the imprimatur
of poetry.

I want to tell you the stories of
my life.  The daring deeds. The
mistakes that you hear in my
voice as a prelude to love.

I am the curlique of madness
that tempts you from the tropic
of yesterday. We were young
and wanton in blue jeans and
rolled hems.  I wore a shirt
emblazoned with your name.

You were perfection in gray
pants and pink shirts.  It was
the 50s and the air sang to us
carrying the music that we
knew as love songs.

We were young then unknown
to each other. Our old souls
were songs as yet unwritten.
Do I confuse you with my
symbols of forgotten requests?

Don't try on my song.   I never
wanted you to.  I am here in
the vocabulary of mistakes.
We cannot find the meaning
In the experience we each had.

Don't look for me to sign.
I am alone in my recent grief.
Don't wait for a sign that
has lost its true North.

You send me flowers which
do not arrive, candy which i
cannot eat.

Tomorrow dies,

as unwritten

song.


Caroline Shank
June 14, 2022

I go where you go.  
I am  in your pores.

I am woven into the  curls
of your red hair.  I push memories
daily through your substantial
mind.

You are host to all the

years of our exile.  I am the
itch you wake to in the
long night.

I will be with you and
when you make love to
your wife I will be beside you.
It will be the secret you can
never tell.

We are the dreams in which
we play when night comes

and the cigarette smoke twins
memory forms, ephemeral
as the love which wraps the past
into the omnipresent

We.


Caroline Shank
12.3.21

To perhaps
remember?

Life lived before.
The leaf circling the
sky. The breeze on
skin.  I know it.

Or I feel it.  The wind
like kisses.
These things

just beyond thought
glisten like oil on the
synapses of experience.

Glimpsed on one
side of consciousness.
Saudade. To be
in the
dream.

To feel nostalgia.
To wonder if

it all might have been

different?



Caroline Shank

The trees shadow and
Un bark, our initials flaunted.

The yellow hue is baked
And naked are the letters.

Undone are alphabets of
stories. Tomorrow doesnt
exist. The flaf is torn and
washed.

Spelling is wasted on the
young.

Today sheds minutes on your own words
grave, dappled letters
ride down the sidewalk
and I am forever mottled.


You took away


your name
, written with the wind

and songs


unsung.


Caroline Shank
10.20.2023

With all your expert mouth and
tongue of many tribes you
call me to the dance floor
of your poetry.

I ear your accent, I tongue the
vowels of your incredible name

which blossoms every morning.
I bed to your brown eyes when
touch begs rest from incessant
breathing.

You are wheat chaff and I am
the wind which blows over the dead dreams of aged memory.

I understand now the satiety
of your love.  The desert of
uncertainty where the bridge
of your wanderings
crossed my month
of ecstasy.

You are the list I take to
mind's far places when
thoughts of you are

exhausted.


Caroline Shank

Long days.  Night slithers through
the door and I reach for you.
I believe in the wisp of
twilight, the smell of dope
and your arm around my
shoulder. The cross we bear.

The map of night is written
and I must go.  Never, the
tears.  I stare at your mouth.
We kiss the chalice of each
others love.  The mass of
yesterday sanctified a long
litany of love unanswered.

I hate the sound of the bells.  
I am brought to my knees. An old woman genuflects, A tear falls.
I confess my sins but never
you.  

You, you belong to the
dusking dreams.  

Caroline Shank

Fear



Fear falls.  I cry
and the mealy ground catches the
sound. I am old.  This is
a young person's dilemma.

The koan that
no one believes is
you and the clapping of my
voice are one in the
desert.  The old cat yawns.
She has heard this sorry
song before.
I mouth your name.

The wind has stopped.  The
cat licks her paws before
she kneads me.  I am alone
with this indifferent creature.  My
arms are around myself where
only the old cat sleeps.


Caroline Shank
9.1.21

I am a slave to the sounds of
poetry. The rhymes of lovers
pledges, the colors of tanned
songs sing to my imagination.  

Poems drape over me like
dresses on women.  I see
colors and patterns reach
with tender fingers. Vowels
touch and with moist
lips, rhyme.

But there are no poems
here in Gilead,
no epic washing away of lines
on the waves of the

final

flood.

clouds form  cold north winds
roll in  we run toward spring
slide  you warm in me

Winter stands on flat frozen feet.
Cold circles swirl, move and in
daylight masquerade.I am
blinded by the stinging swirl.
Here, near my window,
the cat's bowl rests
on the dark plank floor

This season's Specter, the
Ghost days wipe all memory
of high soft summer winds,  
a deep water, strong
and free summertime songs.

May I be patient with this winter
cold mutt of a gun down on the
wide hipped grey trench which
in summer feeds my poetry.

You may ask why I seldom write
these days.

I wait for you. I warm  
that for which you are
not responsible.
But like Mable in my poems

you sing.


Caroline Shank
2.10.22

To my toes.  To the tap tap
tapping of my toes.   I beat to the
rhythm of Willie and Conway.
I don't look like Dolly but
I know she knows me.

My moods swing to the bars
and guitars.  I am under the
swing of stars looking for
the song under the melody.

I want you Loving me Was Easier
than Anything you have Ever
Done Before. I want you to
Lay Me Down.  I Will Always
Love You.

Country music sings to my longing
for you to whom I come with
my strings on a song. I stand
here, tears fall, longing for you
to come and take me to the
limit.

Dance with me.  Swing me around
the moon.  Believe in me.  I am
the first it was to call you to
the floor. I am your Slow Hand.

Caroline Shank

It's April snow on daffodils.
Yellow stains on the white sky.
Drops from God to salve the
feral pain.

I wait for tulips who are encased
in green buds.  A lot of
energy in the making of a flower.
It reminds me of a prayer.

I think my Azalea has gone for
soldiers, and the lilacs wait
for me to heal.  The faces in this
garden look to you.

I am all alone with my prayers,
this station is one before the
Crucifixion. My Garden waits
for our reconciliation as
snow floats on in time past
and time future.

Now is not our cup
of Salvation.  

Forgiveness is not
our business.



Caroline Shank

It was long ago, (I know
I've told you this so often
Craig. ) in a bar, in a night of
Sirius. He wanted only to go
home.  

He left me alone in the dark rain.
My calls refracted back. I ran to
find him. There was
only my voice.

You found my life boring, (Repetition serves those who are paid. ) It
hung over me like a dripping faucet
in a lonely home where once we'd
danced.

You remember now?
You allowed me a random
philosophy
(the therapy of Jung)
where once I'd died.

I am old now, my
memories stray, so..
I will leave
long before
You miss me.


Caroline Shank

It comes from talking too fast.
Words from thought spill through
me.  I am unadorned with
punctuation.  I write in long
lines of ideas switching from
one to another like trestles.

Some thoughts get stuck or are
trapped under wheels. They rub
me clumsily.

I speak only English in a stomach
churning speed.  To tell you how
beautiful you are takes pages and
curls of rushing lines.

I am a jumble of ideas out loud.
A scorch of syllables.  I digress
of course.  I am a stumble of
sounds, a cataract of meanings.

Listen to the scrape of pen, the
words enlighten,emerge, into
conversation.


Caroline Shank
6.8.2023

I have seen the marble arch
and was not afraid.  The
comeliness of it's curved
surface paused me. Your
song whispered of birds

felting by, of fallen kings and
reasons.

I have time on my hands to
listen. Hallelujah.  For my
steadfastness in love has left
me

bereft.

I swore to all the kings in the
Bible. I offered my skinned
knees, for solace that I was heard.

Hallelujah

There are cracks in my head,
my ankles are shackled.  No
music but a laugh echoed
side to side.  

I will go down to the river to
find God.  Your repertoire
is complete.

Why a monk Leonard? The
music of the ages was written
without your melody and
I sank beneath the river
like a stone.

But you're not there.  Your
music sustains me.  I walk
out, wet and cold.  

Hallelujah.

I am redeemed from the
nightmare.  I step on your
music as a soft petal.

I am for a moment, relished
and shriven.  

Hallelujah


Caroline Shank

The sky is blue, the water green,
the sand is white and the Seagulls squawk.

The squish between my toes is friendly.
Try as hard as I can I find
no joy.  

The children dash about and
mother's call.  The red
bathing suit of the toddler
shines and is beautiful.

The lovers on the blanket
kiss, oblivious to my gaze.

The sun is strong, the breeze
is glorious.  The lifeguard
watches the bathers from
a ladder high off the ground.

I walk, alone, along the shore
holding no one's hand.

The salt air is filled with the
smells of Sunday.

You are off to the wars and
I am walking to Tipperary.

Caroline Shank
10.18.19

It's quiet now. I hear the washer
from the next apartment.  Even my
birds

are quiet.

It's when I think of you that the
spinning axis of the planet
requires my attention. The
door that alarmed last year
still screams.  You turned
away from me.  I heard the

slam of your heart, the ram
at the end of your life.  I left

without a kiss.  I live without
your steel.

I turn to where your son
shines and I am guilty

of loving you

still.


Caroline Shank

Plath wrote in a frenzy
just before she died.
She put all of the world's she held
so fragile into the sauce she

brewed in the London of her
despair. Her last thought was
Daddy.

Another ten years.

She was to complete her
poem's anniversary tome.

Plans fail.  

Au pair arrived
to no one answered the bell.

Plath, while her babies
napped,

waited.

She never knew.


Caroline Shank

Purgatory

I forgot about Purgatory, the bus
stop of Catholic needs must have.
The clamor of prayers, the knee
in genuflection.  

Tomorrow I will go to mass.  I will
arbitrate with the voice in
confession.  To die in mortal sin
is my childhood's torment.  The
black robes of St. Patrick's priests.
Early mornings
with my Dad

The brown robes of the Franciscan
who stole my sins in high school.
I wasn't done with them.  I wore
pants and that angered him.  I was
not unholy just skirting the borders
of adolescence my own way.

But I digress.  Purgatory with all
those flapping carers preparing
my way to God Finally and
Absolutely. My prayers tabulated,
my envelope is unsealed.

I am old now and return the
Purgatorial wicker plate to the
transept under which lay
the dust of the unforgiven
travelers.
        Strangers in a strange land..  

The curtains whisper.,
I say penance.

Ten times.

Oh My God I am heartily… .

Amen.


Caroline Shank
10.17 2022

Italics Robert Heinlein

Summer

The stream trickled on,
the frog jumped in to cool off,
the branch creaked with loss

Autumn

autumn golds the leaves,
the cool breeze stirs the summer's
winding song to winter

Winter

Wind wraps around me,
I breathe in the winter air,
the cold ice crack snaps

Spring

Clouds form.  Cold North winds
toll in.  We run toward Spring,
slide.  You warm in me.



Caroline Shank

Things on hold
Bleeding in and the
flowers of surgery are
wilting  

Waiting is sand spreading
on the ground, slippery
and ever widening

My
determination is
rippled.

Morning is thwarted.

I am unmouthed.

Today is

unwritten.



Caroline Shank
5.6.24

To live one minute the breathless
expectancy of life
on the brink of a world whirling
at you with joyous awareness,
is to know that every sunrise calls
the Imam to prayer,

and in you the the consent of
life, the Summer response,
that breathless gasp .  


Caroline Shank.  
12./15/21


Caroline Shank.  
12./15/21

When the years are more than
77 I will have the God of old
age come over.

I will ask him what he can do
when the battles begin. My
brain staging a fight between
the god of old age and the
god of remembering.

Will I serve tea? or scones?
'Will I walk upon the beach"?
My notes fly everywhere in
the melee. And I think of

You.

Not the new you
But
the you of notes and
tablets.

I am torn.  Like school
Notes in a poem or a

song.

I am not old. Younger
than a fresh catch today.

Big mouths gathering for the
Benediction and the

Blessing of the quiet and
Softly.


But not soon.


Caroline Shank

My breath shatters the
frozen ice of all
distinction.

Tomorrow I will clean
   the corridors of my
thoughts but tonight
   I will wait for the
mordant memories.

The red roses, in the
garden you planted
for me over

fifty years ago
do not grow inside
the cold Wisconsin
   battering on my
    
window tonight

I have no Valentine
     from you today.

No nor a whisper of
the door
closing behind you
  By the quiet nurse

so long ago.


Caroline Shank
2.14.2024

I have tears still Un fallen from
my eyes.  They ambush me.
Your birth the
unexpected star of my
life.  Your full face, my
glowing reflection.

Early twirling years in
yellow plaid and a brown
horse named coffee cakes,
dancing on my lap.

You turned to leave me in
the middle of the afternoon.
Eons ago to my heart's ache.

I rock in old clothes on a
winter afternoon.  Your
lost Angel faces me.  I
did wrong.  I cried for
your beauty.

Lord of little girls forgive
me. I run after the early
years, pray for another
moment's innocence.

Turn me away from these
falling tears. Bring me
another time I may

not forget.


Caroline Shank
1.21.2023

It's when the tears dry up,
when the arms are no longer
feeling the loss, when unkissed
the days end that sorrow becomes
memory only and the flat back
of yesterday loses color.

Try harder to replace the moments
strangely forgotten, to remember
the trust, to relive.  Wrapped in memories that once slayed
the dragons of doubt only to
find the pieces of a life unloved
after all in simple shards incapable
of stinging that the ends of
believing are achieved.

This ceases to be a cause for
fear, this lost labor at last
unexpected but tired with
unstrain and blurred with
yesterday's tears.

To lose is always a shock.
To cease to be moved
is a thud in the soul of time.


Caroline Shank

Tomorrow creeps, no wait the
Bard already used that line.
Let me say that tomorrow slings
it's way into me. It's like an
arrow from the Promised Land.
Tomorrow whips across me. I
wipe the sweat of it with
a damp hand.

Panic wets me like rain.  It
waits for tomorrow which,
collides with today and my
fists ball in terror.  Sleep
never soothes this breast,
it barely makes it in the front
door.

I breathe deeply, or try to.
What will help is greatly
misunderstood.  A prescription
for today to stop tomorrow.
Which will slam me to the
floor anyway.

I shake myself awake.  

It is always today.
I stumble on.

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.

I am reminded of Florida and the
sunshine. The heat of memory.
I loved the years spent with you.

The slant of time, the curls of
daylight. Walks on the sands.
You took my forever talking
with smiles.  I remember

the last days there, combing
for memories. Packing the
pictures to satisfy the cold

north screaming winters.

You were wrong to leave me
halting, grimacing, the nurses
alone your last

Lovers.

Caroline Shank
1.1.24

Are you sleeping up there in
the stone parapet in which
you spend your time writing
letters and showing how you
can trip the light fantastic

with no one watching. You,
where you retreat to listen
to music. To read your books
and with wine dream,
like Miniver Cheevy, of the
days of roses.

Do you think of me? My
perfume you were so fond
of.  Oh, how I adored you!

I am not allowed to climb
the steps to your so private
sanctuary.  The locked door
reminds me of your pledge
to God to leave me and the
child.  

We are not yours, not anymore.
You with your hunched shoulders
crying "That is not all, that is
not it at all."

Your dead heroes replace me.
I should have gone away before
I knew you loved me.  But how
could I?  I will tomorrow shows
me a new place to hide away.

Think of me when you are
inside with your plans and dreams,
and I am on the outside scrolling
across the long years in which
I am stranded.



Caroline Shank
4.29.20

It's getting dark early again. The
street lamps are on by dinner.
Soon the memory of piles of
leaves, the smell of Fall and
the call to jump in the whispering

auburn heaps of my youth
would jolt me.

I am old now and fat.  The
ritual of Autumn's call to
the dark evenings that were
an invitation to the holidays,
is a calling cocktail.

The rains drained the ashes
into the sidewalk gutters.  The
hopscotch grid fades as day
light melts and I lose the
game.

Games are like drifts of scents
across the light post's shadow.
They are the ephemeral
recipes of my New York
youth. I walk to the edges
of the grass reading the
folded paper fortunes that

told me I would marry Jack
someday. I didn't. I threw
the lined prediction in the
leaves, scuffed my brown
shoes on the sidewalk

never dreaming that real
life would crinkle like the
ruled paper forgeries.



Caroline Shank

More fool me. You named the
earth a green planet, the sky
often ten shades of punk.  You
told the Angels to leave your

scorecard at the door.

The Angel of abuse to the
Angel of love.  

Much of desire is so short
an afternoon.  

The bulls are running and they
Look to you to have

The answers


Caroline Shank
9.16.23

I've started walking with a cane.
I'm like an old broken soldier.
Under the sofa are parts that do
not fit in rusty sockets.  New
loops and strings cannot

put
me
together.

I missed muster again and
got the letter.

I am
not required
at table

any more.

I spend my days twirling parts
left over from first rounds.
My springs boing hollow
and I don't
see well at night.

What will happen
to
me
now
that I have
seen the moment
of my greatness
flicker?

(I can still
quote Eliot.)

I want you more to
more than move me,
you starting my gears
and I overflow with

Purpose.

Your attention goes
and
I

no longer

see my any
self
at all.


Caroline Shank
2.07.2023