Only small things, a moment,
a book title, the minutes
it costs to think of you.

The ends of conversation,
served, a chip of being.
The loosed love,

hovers.

A savory
is refused.

The empty glass
a refill.

Tomorrow is left
out of me.

It lies like the last
syllable

of my shriveled
lexicon.

I am unraveled and
like thought itself
I go

away

from even the

thought

of you.


Caroline Shank
7.19.2024

Reflections on a Wednesday
              Afternoon
  
While waiting for an appointment,
I am **** bench numb uncomfortable.
I glimpse the yellow corn fields
out of the window…

I am sixteen.  The Autumn
of my last New York year.

Oh no, I am not dead like
the girl in the book I read.

I'm old and my youth
touches me.  I no longer
jump like a girl, but i
observe.

The traps and snares of
memory, alive among the
detritus of those years
dump into my basket
like fishy Fridays.  

We had a cat as
white and feral as
lightning. She would
lick the Friday platter.
We worried about the
bones.

But I digress.

The corn leans in, a
deliberate stretch
to hear the sounds I
left

I was a child of the 50s.
So long ago.  

The memories
are squashed

by the army
of commuters

who always
smote my

songs.


Caroline Shank

this:  a round frame, a seascape,
no one is there.  A Sting Ray
burroughs in wet sand. Three
gulls fly low over the shore.

The oils display the sky over
the scene in shades of
blue, yellow and pink.

The wind howls across
the dunes and the seabirds
screech.  Hear them.
in the wayback. See the
sun struggle with the oils
for just a little space on
the canvas

Colors hang on a cancer
patient's hospital wall.
He sees the spread of
colors through the
morphine.  It is for
him a movement in
between the waves
where the relentless
pain remains.


Caroline Shank

We used to spend whole evenings
grinding on your playroom floor.
I learned from you to kiss through
clenched lips, to watch TV over
your shirt stained shoulder. Your
sister, my friend?, Eating popcorn

You left when you were done, me
to make amends to Kathy for the
adolescent floorshow.  To eat
popcorn to stop my stomach
heaving with excitement.  

You told everybody.  I had to walk
through the fog of laughter.
Not even the memory of your
lying words that night
could rub off the smear of
regret.

You showed me deceipt.
I turned my face to the wall,
crumpled and bleeding.

You sent me
to Hell with every

crack of your laugh.



Caroline Shank

The sound of the tenor notes
culled by the expert plying music,
swiping keys and sweat from
the essential melody of the
saxaphone sends me into
the world of the sensual.

I breathe shallowly.  Sigh in
the tender way of notes
brushed against my skin.

I sit in the smoky club as if
alone in my secret self.
Smoke trails from my mouth

as he makes contact.  
The player sees me and
knows my helplessness
as he swings toward me
trailing the sound of his
sax across my waiting lips.

Caroline Shank

There is still the rocking of
decisions amidst the myriad
daily tasks of which the
true label’s my conversation .

If Macbeth is the analogy
du jure no doubt the
witches will once again
sing the single syllable
their vocabulary utters.

I toil while the firelight remains.
The maps of my skin are
particular, I choose you.

Skies clear deep blue ever
present in the unsleep
washing over the signature’s
toes, I go on.  The petty
pace of time like the
seasons regurgitating

****** reasons goes on.


Never before has the
changed Bible paused in
it's slouching toward
Bethlehem.

“I have seen the eternal
footman snicker

and in short,
       I was afraid.”


Caroline Shank.        T.S.Eliot
10.22.2024.               Shakespeare

You are very likely watching

football and I don't mean to

interrupt.  I am thinking of you

and wondering how you are?

I know great and terrible things

are occurring in your world.


My world is failing by chips and

blisters.  It's third down for us.

Tomorrow will exist as it always

does.  


But I will be glad to have some

time alone.  To feel you

not always coming in my

door.  To sit and think about

how much I want a cigarette,

a glass of Sherry.


You may not walk in 

and that matters.  It really does,

but not as much as yesterday.


Play your silent games.  

I reclaim my life. 

You don't have to look so

puzzled.  

We were not so very much,

after all. 



Caroline Shank

It's a movie afternoon.  On the
menu today is Stephen King.
Pennywise, gruesome and
gore.  Sit tight the clown
is coming. Up and over,
round and round.  Balloons
rip the fragile air,  Screams
tear through today.

The sewer is full of blood.
The axel-tree is full of mud.
I see it in the look of his
face.  "I'm coming!" is his
insistent cry.

Who's in there now? Go in
and see. I am bound to a
mixture of fear.  Stir me up.
Tap off the movie.  He is
scared even as he writes.

I turn around and see the
clown.  He melts into me.
I only know enough
to run scared.

I am bound for the after-
noon train to Derry.

Caroline Shank

Why, when I need sanity most,
do I find confusion
surfacing around me.

Tell me you love or tell me you
don't.  Speak plainly, without rancor
or condescension.  For
Heaven's sake quit
confounding me with erudition.

You know enough
the way to get in
touch with the skin
of meaning.  

Rub me on my fingertips.
Feel my heartbeats.
I feel you in the cradle of my
old age.

Lead me not into temptation.
But deliver me from confusion.
forever and ever.

Amen

Caroline Shank

I want a new literature, something
closer, before the white froth of
language spreads itself on the
sand.  A new book to read, a
clean beach over the world of
my youth.  My mother burrows in
shallow ground, is a bird pecking
its way out.  She drapes herself
in feathers.

I need a new literature.  Something
to hold above the wound where she
rips in and out of me like a
door. A new book to lay over an
old story.

I sift through the silt of this
shore where my world is
dug up with tin spoons.  I grow
old in the quiet of my age,
hear the sound of freedom, see
the last tears run into the
ocean of my regrets.


Caroline Shank

Witness

I don't remember the last
kiss
that swept me away
arch of my back
slip of language

Kiss

The aged are forget,
are watched.
The threshold of
the past

is never crossed.

Wrinkled  like
yesterday is blown.
is

fallen.
The floor
is

scraped across
planks of
blond colored

dreams.


What you see is the
Last dance,

of the  only
music

left.


Caroline Shank
6.26.2024

Now you are there where
the time turns out to be a
mixture of fear and joy.  
You live between the lines
and spaces of my mind.

We root for all the people
left on the battlefields
of this ****** war
on which we will either
sacrifice or lose to make
the last days of memory
and the dance of the day
our hymn to the silent
future.

We suffer, you and I, the
days of darkness and
strange things that are
coming at us like leaves
twisting off the trees.  We
arrange ourselves between
the dates that crawl from
the calendars. You say
we are going to get, in
the last days of autumn,
the first rays of Spring.

When I Think of you
I pray.

Caroline Shank

Beware the stranger at your door.
The tissue voice of magic,
the tight handshake.

The seduction of your senses,
good words can lie.

Arrive at a place of softness,
the betrayal of surprise.

Stubborn denial, voices
enlarge the deceit.
You are not safe
when softness hides
the stone of treachery.


Caroline Shank

I will kiss you last before
I shuffle off, though you
will not know it.
I write your name
with a cloud's bent rod.

You will not know me,
old and fat, but I
owe you an engraved
allegiance.

You left in the rain.  And I,
I ran home to bare my
pain on the palm side of
tomorrow.  Always you,
young and warm. Still
my old heart beats
with your

goodbye.


Caroline Shank
11.1.20

The lamp is lit, the day undercover.
I wonder where you are?  In my chair,
in my room, on the sidewalk.  I think
I will never see you.  Your face
in the lamplight mirrors the summer
night I called but you never came.

I sit under the light of the lamp
I ponder on my hands.  I held
you beyond understanding.

I promised not to hurt you.
I failed.  I heard myself
cry on the beach we shared
once and briefly.

My eyes are closing. The
light has long ago gone out.

Caroline Shank

It's snowing in flat fat globs.  

The wet from which it is born 

laughs at me.  It knows I

feel alone in my misery of 

winter. 


The cold turns my fingertips

as white as ice.  I must have

injured them sometime.

I stay in the house mostly


and I dream of big spots of 

sun like Florida summers

en *****.


I wait for Wisconsin

to spill it's tulips and

poppies.  I breathe slowly

the gray days of January.


I sit cross-legged alone 

in the icy winter, wake

when warm air permits. 



Caroline Shank

the candles are lit
the wisemen travel abroad
I bow to midnight

The desert is cold
this December night across
the moon's path to Him

there is joy in the
air the angels sing out loud
sing a choir breathing

thank the Lord of my
salvation.  I have little
to give the one I love.

but He has raised my
heart to His acknowledge
He will be here soon.

three men arrive at
a stable door with gifts for
the Son of God cries

out loud love will win
and I am handed the night
the whole world rejoiced


Caroline Shank

Stones.
Blue dancer.
On a beach
reach
Welcome.

Tomorrow's
Light
The.
Star is

bku+líyhú
In other
words
Loved killed
My mother

Scraped shoe.
Arsenic is
4.0 on
A scale of
death;   b bb bb;

Tomorrow's
Tattoo

**** up.
I am. Alone.

Tattoo
You said?


Caroline Shank
10.3.2024

You join me.  I am the receiving
slot to your philosophy.  We talked
for years.  You pushed the
red and yellow of your crazy
mind into me.  I was

the join to your metaphor.
You were the tendon which
completed the fit.

Now, lumber on the barn
floor I am martyred.

I tried to love you, my soul
inhaling your every thought.
You unearthed the grain of
my waiting mind.

You finished the fence post
of our friendship and moved
to Cincinnati.  I fell over,
A tear in the fabric of
magic.

Caroline Shank

I thought you were good
for me, but you're not.  You
are pretty and you sound
like a soft summer wind
whistling through tall grasses.

You have so many sides.
You run your hand down
the gentle nubs of my thoughts.
One side caresses and another
side wounds.

You rain along my stem.
A footprint on my
back, a signature to
an iambic attempt.

Your voice is the poem.
The sound of absurdity
is the dilemma.



Caroline Shank

I have seen my shadow lying
on the playground of your
mind, and I was aware.

I have heard you sing my song
and I was taken.  Have you
seen me running to the beat,
beat, beat of your steps tapping
on the paths where we stopped
that day we made love in the
garden of the old house?

I'd have chased your music
into that tomorrow rain if you'd
asked.  I slipped behind the
tree to wait.  I saw you
running on the sunbeam,
down by the river, dancing
like a dandelion spore
on the breeze of evening.

I called you and you waved
your panama in the vestiges
of my dream.

Was it all imagination then?
running down my mind.
Touch me again where
you counted my pulse
leaving me breathless
in the corners of my soul.
It was a sweet dream.

If you ever find me running
toward you stay for a time.
Turn around elusive piper,
my body moves to your song.

Dance with me when I am
dreaming. Throw me a kiss in the
Summer breeze that tastes
like forever in the space
before awakening.


Caroline Shank

You can't reverse the dying
of a leaf. Even if it is not fully
in the ripeness of its demise.

The yellow stripe of incipient
decay that rides the center
of the foliage is only the
beginning.  The curled
edges follow and if there
is a flower it will float down
very shortly.

Love like death takes
its time with all things.  
Toes and fingers curl in a semblance of sadness.  
The veins break
like old thread.  

Both leave in their own season,
in short gasps.  The last thing
to go is the stem. The *******
resonance of a long goodbye.

It rejects the unction
of extreme prayers
left on the
knuckle of loss.


Caroline Shank

I am Pandora. I have let everything escape.  My days are filled with searching. Mostly I look for you.

I can't gather the misguided
objects which surround me now. I
need to fight for the mountain
tops and silver lakes I knew
when we were young.

Are you still among the reeds
and shells of lost nights and
trodden days.  Memories dip
around me.

Say it isn't so, that you have
shorn your curls, pantsed your
youth and wiped the shy
calendar on the grass where
we talked into the night.

I try to return hope to the
broken  container but
it cuts my hands.  The
contents dive at me
like yellow birds in
a banana tree,

I am alone among the
troubles.  I am wrapped
in the moods of
silence.

I curve around the center,
gather your image
in my graying
locks.

Caroline Shank

You’ve spilled like light through the glass. Your
poems are in front
of me as I write.

I break through.
You are the Spring
in which I have grown
green.

Your poems are fertile
lines growing in
through open windows.

I write because your
poems show the way.

You are the teacher,
I am the scribe.  
My poems are born

and

I write while your sun
beams light
on my page.


Caroline Shank

Run with me Sammy
Hold onto the trails of
imagination. I love 
your touch.
You pour through
the branches of my life
like sunbeams through
cognac.

Caroline Shank

"I have forgotten your love yet I seem to
glimpse you in every window". Neruda

The closer I come to your image as
I pass the shop windows the more
I can't recall your touch.  My skin
no longer vibrates as you once knew
it.  Do you remember?

I have forgotten your kiss.  Your
red lips in the glass do not resemble
memory.  They are the stain
left in my soul after longing
has gone.

"Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring."
Neruda

I no longer look in the glass to see
you calling.  That I no longer
remember.

Your glimpse is a broken pain
to my still aching denial.

Caroline Shank

Tomorrow creeps it's been
said.
I have nothing to offer as balm.

The hours tritely signal the new
est

hollow minutes.  The breeze
through my shabby thoughts
finds no place
to rest

Will there be a

another song?

Someone will sing it

so wrongly yet familiarly
time you carved

into me?⁰

Just past noon on a summer day
today  is fighting to let me go

I am trapped in a

vortex from
which I will never be let go.

I beg to be forgotten
by

you

the prying and the Poetry
I writ

before pity turned our

journey to

Salt..


Caroline Shank
July 1, 2025

There you go again
scaling the walls of
my scarred and forked
emotions.  I cover the
limbs which you have
not as yet noticed.

I hear you chanting.
I shiver as you dance
around the soft underbelly
of yesterday.

If I could tell you that
which I know to be
true would you stop
your blue colored cry
to be love touched?

Could we but begin the
music again?  I don't know
what the years of our separation will bring, I only know
that we are soft
sound on skin.

Tango me esta noche.


Caroline Shank

The jukebox was the only light
in the tavern.  
We were alone in the dry
recess of a lonely world.
You sang in my ear while
I swayed to your rhythm.

The song was a long low
cry.  I was urgent
in your embrace.  

I am reminded of that night
you walked away from me in
the damp laundry of dawn.

Turn around to face me,
the climate of my lonely
arms.

Hold me again to the tick
of memory so I can,
once more, dance
close to you.

Regardez moi
mon amour.




Caroline Shank

Thoughts of Old Age

To think about getting old?
Ay that is the question.
Tomorrow rapes the day
of sentiment, the curling
onion skin that never

unrolls.

And my mind cannot comprehend
old age.  The loose tooth
of retirement falls out.

Hope falls from yesterday
when,  albeit time allows,
the young scalawag crosses off

future’s possibilities as the
insensible droppings of
the cat who remains in the
corner.  The shedding of

youth’s romances.

Old age ponders through
rheumy tears the last
kisses , the shoulders
on which shawls

Droop


Caroline Shank
10.8.2024

I write this poem as memory.
The warm night we danced
over the pizza place to "Me and
Mrs. Jones." or the trip to the
museum.  

We were tan and
dressed in white.  Summer
was knocking and we
opened the door.

It was a fine door.  We didn't
know then that the wind from
Canada was coming for us.
We drank as we shared
your jacket.

"Listen" you warned me you
were leaving, calling me to wrap
your fleeing shadow around
the mannequin of July.  "Listen"
pounding in my head.

I write you into poetry 46 years
later.  See, I hold your flame in
my hands. Drops of ash in
a goblet of memory.


Caroline Shank

Hey Alabama.  I drove through

you half my life ago.  You were

most green and gracious.  Blue

skies foamed clouds supine on

my skin.  A thin veil of fog an

unseen future away.


I slowly crossed your planet,

picked flowers on the verge.

I remember the heat.  The red

hair of summer curled against

the day.  Nights vibrated, a gong

gone mild.  Soft, resonating, still

resonating.  I breathed air in

like smoke, holding it inside

for long seconds, a question

waiting for its answer.


Long years have veined miles,

mapped time.  I am blued with

thinking of it.


Hey Alabama.

I remember.  Your highways

still, so sweet.  You travel

soft as sleep.

Caroline Shank

That say if you stand at Michigan and State
in Chicago long enough you will
meet someone you know.
My mother always said that.

Will I meet you there?  Will you
see the eager young woman you
once knew?  You know, the brunette,
thin, full of your blue eyes looking?

I will stand there for all the years
I have left.  I will shield myself
from disappointment, having forty
five years of practice, I wait
like Penelope.  You have only
to sail your ship to my side.

You are a voyage I can't
complete alone.  Raise your
red sails.  I stand on this
corner to save the life I
once threw away.  


Caroline Shank

It's all behind me now.  The
days of wine and roses, and you.
I was young in the tender
of my years.  

You were curled and red, the
tight nights of summer dimmed
my eyes.  The breezes
of June were wrapped embraces.

In these, my last years here, I dwell
on summer.  No matter the cold of
Wisconsin, it's the brilliance of
then that I rub on my face like
fine oil.  I remember the incense.
The musk of your scent
lingers.

We were a tune that played for
the span of one summer.  It
is as strong in my memory as ever
were your hands on my face.  

Once when I loved you,
almost fifty summers ago, I
promised I wouldn't hurt you.
But you left me to
broken poems.

I am wooden in my age
and I dance with hard
shoes.  The days are
long and the nights
no longer sing.

Caroline Shank

I write so you will answer me.
I see you sit, your confusion
curled like hair on a new poodle.

I write to touch your face with
my thoughts.  Know that my
fingers wrap around your sorrows.

I offer my hand in reply to
your silence.  I wait for

you
to touch

me.

Here I am.  I write words
in the wind

which brushes

by you.


Caroline Shank

I should talk about you Ma,
but what is there to say?
You lived like an illusion
inside of a nightmare.

You were born to be a
queen.  You said so
so often I wanted to run
away forever and never
again hear you prattle.

I wanted to love you but
failed.  You were brave
in your illness.  You wore
your psychosis like a
badge.  The crest of
madness suited you.

When you died they laid
you out like royalty.
Finally you composed
the scenery for us,
your subjects.

Michael was unmoved
while I cried.  Daddy was
a wreck washed up on
a lonely island.  His raison
d'etre gone forever.

My tears were a shock.
The last two minutes you
took from me.

I have never returned to
your lonely palace

underground.


Caroline Torpey Shank

It's New Year again

Winter brings another flavor

to my lonely heart.


Caroline Shank

12.31.19

I am surprised to discover
myself in old age.  
I repeatedly find myself in
the 50's or 60's
as if I never left. It's truly
shocking, the image in the
mirror, the chubby, no fat
old lady I said I would never
become.

Here I am.  Looking young
through old eyes, wearing
sensible shoes thinking
spike heels and fancy hose.
I am still 27 not the 74 I have
inadvertently become.

I am flat shoes and sweaters
in the summer. No hot
tan or sun bleached hair.

This is the time for rocking in
my chair not the dance
floor.  My, I was good.
When the music made sense.
I have my favorites still.
A playlist we danced to.

You kissed me in the dark
and left me in the rain.

I must rearrange my baggy
pants and sweaters. I shy
away the summer breezes
and shiver in the sun.
I look for you in the night,
find you in dreams,
a dear lost
moment.  

It all went by
so fast.



Caroline Shank

We walk a little in joy

Then we fall to the grass.

You touch me and I reach


for the stars. You whisper

and I feel your breath

In my sighs.


Don't be afraid, but be

careful of the lights

that cover the evanescent

moon.  


We are beautiful in the night.

And when we wake our tryst

will end.  I fade always

in the sun.


Caroline Shank

I hope to see you soon,
in the morning with
rumpled hair and boxer
shorts.

I hope to see you soon,
when the Spring sun
is high and the blue of
your eyes wash the
shadows of separation
away.  

I hope to see you soon,
when stars crinkle the
daylight and the songs
of the night cricket
compline.

Will we walk the
lined path along the
beach of memory?

If there is nothing left
after the lighthouse has
gone dim and illness
separates us forever

know that I will be
there in the interstices
of our heart's last
singing.


Caroline Shank

I wait for the cold dark to run
like *** down my chin.

I wait for the sun to round
the side of my building
bringing tomorrow's promise.

It was always to be tomorrow
when I taste your licorice flavored
mouth again.

I wait like the Oracle said,
for the time when the gods
will bring you to my song.

I wait. Coltrane blowing
forever in my heart.  

Forever, the saxophone,
your breath,
in my hair.

I wait for tomorrow. For music.
For wine.  A song to
sing to the empty nights.
I drink to the miles into
darkness…



Caroline Shank

I failed at poppies last

year.  They turned to 

my soil and shrugged.


Red vessels with dreams inside.

Black and yellow inhabits the

cup inside delicately.


I watched them turn from

me in indifference

they, not knowing how I longed

to share their anodyne.


Caroline Shank

My Daughter Near Drowning
  in Lake Michigan
     Seven years old



So cold and still her eyes looked
up at running me.  Glass is like
the water between us.  I am
Christ.  I never felt the wet
and never sank.  I reached
her through the mirror of
myself.

I am her god now.


Caroline Shank

You inspire me.  I am somehow
more when I am with you.  
You have given to me the
grapes and the branches
I need to weave my poems
around the ink and the paper
of my imagination.

You took a partial talent and
it blossomed by your fertile
mind.  You knew me as a
tattered vine and wove
my waiting dreams.

I drink to you,
a toast
of gratitude.  

A poet's dream.

Caroline Shank

My poems fall flat
like a slap on a
warm winter night.

I'm an old woman
in a dry season.
I tally the years on
prayer beads.  The
clack doesn't help.

I call out "Dr. Dr. Take
my breath away. It's
all I have left to pay
the toll."

I try and try to call
you but my hands
fail.  There is
nothing left of
me.  I lay my
crackled hands
on a picture
you might

remember.


Caroline Shank

The neon sign writes
against the dark.
Let's stop for a beer.  It
has been a long time.  
It's crowded
in here tonight
crushed with the
sketches of people
we once knew. ..

Just a quick one
before we reescape into the
dream. I will wait for you
at the table by the door,
watch you bring again
the ale of our last
date.  

Little did we know
the years would be so
cruel. We will reach,
once more,
each to the other, in this
smoky bar. ..

Y Not?


Caroline Shank

I am not a kind person

At times
I trickle interest in what
you are saying.

Mostly
I wait for
noon on a hot
day.

The breath of a
thousand words
cannot reach

the craters of
stones dug
without care.

I am not a kind person.

Where you were,
dying,
it was
the nurses who
compassioned you.

My reflection was
hidden in the
still pool of your and

leaving brown eyes.

I reek with sadness,
with the
penance of being

alone.



Caroline Shank
10.8.2022

I wait for the blue hour.
The time to open the story
into the dusk of
regret.

I am ready to read and
lose myself.  Blue touches
black.

I’m a hungry type of person.
I hang my coat on the tree
and walk into the kitchen

The same kitchen where you
used to drink coffee with me.
The same green walls with
yellow flowered wallpaper.  
Do you remember?

No?  You were
always looking at me as if
I were the only character in
your book.  You knew you
were my whole library.  I
could cover you with
my crying eyes and
you would be there,
in my world, forever.

Marry me
you said but I was
married.  You charged
into the tomb of night.

And I cannot lose
the exquisite pain of
those final pages?

  
Caroline Shank