I’m not terribly happy with this reading — I had a cold at the time, and it certainly sounds like I rushed through it a bit. I still have fun with the poem, though.
That moon still sails past my window every night.
*****
“Roanoke Summer Midnight”
Its midnight moon is newly minted coin —
a white-hot silver obol
forged in burning phosphorus.
The crisping clouds around it blacken.
Its silhouetted mountains
are great blue gods at slumber
the faded-haze azure horizon’s
giants in the dim.
Those slopes have known a billion bones of hares
that raced upon them other midnights, then,
pausing, one by one,
drawing up their downy legs at last to final sleep.
Where the Shenandoahs’ driving
beryl falls to black,
aquamarine to onyx,
lay legions of hares — generations resting.
There are the hills where ivory
rabbits sleep among gods.
Ahead and under moonlight
the curving rural road obscures its end.
At right, an intersecting well-lit modern block
confuses the curling topography.
The fresh and symmetrical asphalt’s angle
mars the winding thoroughfare with order:
a ninety-degree anachronism.
That new and perfect subdivision
affronts the corner’s antebellum chimney,
broken down to stones and overrun in lavender
— its lilac colors driven plum by sunset.
That last century’s smokestack
was itself effrontery once
to the formless places where natives stayed
their only edifice the stars,
their only currency the blinding coin of moon.
Eyeing, then, the summits’ crowning cobalt
driving down in royal blue to coal,
I hope to one day take my rest
there, in the darkening indigo,
alongside giants,
among white rabbits in myriad easy stillness,
to pause myself at last and sleep beneath
what meadows stretch in cerulean dark,
where hares will race like moon-kissed silver,
or comets of darting pearl.
Church Avenue between the Circuit Court and the Texas Tavern. The impressive church that you see (this town has a lot of them) is Greene Memorial United Methodist Church.
5th Street Overpass near the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Mill Mountain is in the background. If you look closely at the sixth photo, you can see what looks like a gutted fighter jet to the right of the two antiquated trains. I can only assume those are connected with the museum. (So, too, is the rusting hulk in the seventh.)
These are just a few shots of the City of Roanoke in the vicinity of Mill Mountain. I really like the style of the houses here, although I don’t know what it is. They’re truly immense, despite looking a bit boxlike.
Here’s my plan, anyway. I’m going to find out where that adorable lady cop’s regular patrol is, and then shoot past her in my car doing 70. When she pulls me over and asks to see my license, I’ll just wink slyly and ask if she means my poetic license.
My Side of the Mountain. Looking for Frightful and The Baron.
That view is extraordinary, isn’t it? Mill Mountain rises to around 1,750 feet, and these were taken when my alumbuds and I were at or near the summit.
My baby groundhog buddy came back, but he’s shy all of a sudden. See the little twerp peeking out of the storm drain?
When I posted his picture on Facebook, however, Blog Correspondent Pete Harrison immediately cautioned me that he might NOT be a groundhog. (And me all alone in my little yellow raincoat!)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 