Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan

“At the Coffee Shop,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Draw your
slim white finger to your lips in your thoughtful
pause at the coffee shop.
Glide it unknowingly down
the slender pink bank of your lower lip
beneath the easy stream of your speech,
your lithe tongue a siren there,
pressing gently along your syllables,
and your enlivened words
her serene refrain.

Draw your
eyes to the bright light at the great window —
the iridescent blue of the sky you led me to,
Your irises reflecting
the heaven that is yet less than you.

Draw your
warm opal palm over the pages of your book, to show me,
though its words are only hieroglyphs —
illegible in my ardor,
Iberian beside you,
arcane runes under your perfume.

Draw your
fingertips to touch my knee
in gentle reassurance,
sensing my avidity.

These — all of these —
Song and lesser heavens, hieroglyphs and touch of knee,
draw me
to you, now and ever, whether
present or in memory.

(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2023



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Photo credit: By Takeaway – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26758175

Throwback Thursday: U2’s “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World” (1991)

I love this song.  This was the ninth track from U2’s landmark 1991 album, “Achtung Baby.”  I remember listening to this song while munching on Butterfingers candy bars, cramming nervously for psych exams in my dorm room during the 1993/94 school year at Mary Washington College.

By psych exams, I mean tests in my psychology classes — not tests administered to me by a psychiatric professional.  But, hey, maybe they should have given me the latter.  It might have saved everyone a lot of time.



I finally got the dam picture!!

This is … a beaver dam?  I think?  I spotted it in the Roanoke River the other night … there were furballs of some kind down there, and I saw an enormous heron swoop down to join them. I shot video, but it was too dark to share.

Is it a beaver dam?  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.  I won’t be embarrassed.  You know I am a native New Yorker, and have no acumen for Virginia fauna.  Maybe it’s a muskrat maze or ferret fortress or a nutria superstructure.  You tell me.



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“Ooh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.”

I got really excited the other night — I saw an immense, graceful heron glide over the Roanoke River to land beside a … beaver dam!!  Which had apparently always been there, but which had heretofore escaped my notice!  And there were beavers bobbing and swimming about!  (I’m guessing they are nocturnal?)

I tried to get pictures and video for the whole gang — but it was too dark.  The footage I shot was all shadow.

Then I made the mistake of excitedly posting the following on Facebook: “I just saw a beavers and a heron!”

The.  Jokes.  Will.  Not.  Stop.  (Sheesh, you people.)

This includes a lot of “heroin” comments.  I’m kinda surprised by the level of drug-related humor out there.