it’s easy to miss the juncos’ slow, sudden departure in spring;
messengers from colder warming worlds

they arrive a dulling autumn:
peppering notations of life in a landscape encased,
each deep dark demitasse
brewed on increasingly tardy dawns
painting a night sky inverted

standing ankle deep in first snows
searching for leftover springs beneath the detritus

but then they finally emerge with the warblers,
orioles, robins, and buntings

and pointillism fades beneath impressionist palettes
that flash over treetops and underbrush

but the last juncos linger:
quiet familiar trills outside my window each morning
disrupting stillness till it disappears

I was starving in
Pennsylvania.
One night, I had
enough.
Done with it all.
The poverty and
sickness.
The drunken mad
nights
and dog-fight days.
Brutality for breakfast.
Served sunny side up
runny yolks with
butterflies trapped in
the yellow sunshine.
Spiders built webs in
my soul.

I stood on the torn-up
couch in my living room and
yelled at the walls.

Listen, you devil.
You want me, you better be
ready for a fight.
I paced the floor like a
washed-up heavyweight champ,
eyeing the ceiling like a
drunken sparrow in a cat's mouth.

i want to peel your skin back
and reveal your deepest sweetness.
to look at your veins
and memorize their paths.
maybe then i’d understand
why you are so rough on the outside.
it takes a lot of work,
digging your fingernails into the flesh,
pulling and pulling until you are bare.
but it is all worth it;
to visit your center,
to break past what conceals you,
and take you apart
slice by slice.

You were making the weather, I think
when you found me alone, all tethered in sinuous seaweeds
You had brought the sky inside with you.
What else could you do?

Damascus steel, your snarl
Hard, beautiful, sharp, distinct. An art.
You let the rain have your heart, for a moment, didn't you?
What else could you do?

Your footsteps are music that I can't quite hear
But your face is a season of songs--lyrics screamed at God.
Tear me from my torpor, please, no matter the violence.
What else could you do?

Distance means more than one thing, I suppose; and separation
Of land. Of daring. Of intent and of want.

List holy places and honey their names...
Eden, Asgard, Avalon,
Camelot, Elysium (Aluminum! Linoleum!)
I'd settle for Akron if you'd meet me there,
or Butte, even.

Your eyes buzz and hum or retreat and freeze over
and I? I follow their lead when I see them.
I can do nothing other.

Whenever I wander, I think of your shape
or the shape of your thinking.
I can do nothing other.

This, then, is a prayer now.
I pray with your name, which I'm always whispering.
I can do nothing other.

My eyes, throbbing with agony,
bore through the window,  
desperately seeking the freedom of sky.  

To my surprise the crabapple tree  
possessed joyous magenta flowers,  
providing an unexpected  
jubilant assault of my mind.  

Lush leafy erratic branches,  
a turmoil of spring beauty  
stood in striking empathy of my silent cries.  

The afternoon sun pales the majesty of magenta.
As only love can pale agony.  
Memories live forever, is a haunting horrible lie.  
Unlike me, those magenta flowers don't need a why....

My love for her will never die.  
The majesty of those magenta flowers,  
if only for a moment, seizes and saves me deep inside.

Grief is a filled cloud,

vapor.
Limp.

  reaches

failed prisms.

are
easy when
night and day figures
debit
your

Balance.

my
Observation:
you

Gone.


Caroline Shank
April 15, 2025