Yeah, okay — so May 19th is just Roanoke’s annual Drive-All-Over-the-Road Day.
Way to make your own holiday, there, Roanoke.
(The headline above is an MST3K reference.)
Tag Archives: Roanoke
One snail, one jackrabbit, three deer and three baby groundhogs.
That sounds like a hand for a children’s card game.
I encountered all of these during just a six-minute walk outside my friend’s house yesterday. The jackrabbit, the deer and one of the baby groundhogs were all too fast for me to get a shot of.
The baby groundhogs were adorable – they’re just nervous little balls of brown fur. The trick is sneaking up behind them. (Watch your six, groundhogs.)
A tunnel and an overhead train redux, Roanoke, Virginia
Once again, heading into Roanoke Southwest.
So I finally figured out why I kept seeing blue pinwheels throughout Roanoke.
April was National Child Abuse Awareness Month. I kept seeing these “pinwheel gardens” in front of businesses — mostly in Roanoke, though the one below was in Salem.
It seems to me to be a clever and effective marketing device. Whoever came up with it deserves a lot of credit.
The Mellow Mushroom, Roanoke, Virginia
It’s the psychedelic pizza joint with the life-sized Transformer out back.
That’s an unusual marketing strategy.
Railroad tracks in Roanoke, VA
Under the Wonju Street overpass in Roanoke SW, heading north.
A tunnel and an overhead train, Roanoke, Virginia
This is heading into Roanoke Southwest.
The … Lakeside Plaza Gang?
I and a particularly surly acquaintance took this shot about a month ago.
I like how it looks like we are about to drop the baddest rap album ever.
“This Windy Morning,” by Eric Robert Nolan
“This Windy Morning,“ by Eric Robert Nolan
The gales cry,
their sounds rise,
so strangely like
the wailing of children.
The gales
have ripped a rift in purgatory.
Along the low hill’s haze
and indistinct palette of grays,
the thinning slate shapes
are either columns of rain,
or a quorum of waifish wraiths.
Condemned but inculpable
are those little figures —
long ago natives maybe — in an ironic,
insufficient sacrament:
this obscuring rain’s
parody of baptism.
If that faultless chorus
should never see heaven,
they will ever be wind without end
their lamentations ever
shrill within rare
arriving spring downpours.
Always will the squall
imprison their calls.
You and I should refrain
any temptation to breach
these palisades of rain —
lest we be greeted by each
iron-colored countenance:
the sorrowing slim nickel
of an infant’s visage,
little boys’ graying faces,
the silvering eyes of the girls.
© 2017 Eric Robert Nolan
[Note: I began writing this yesterday morning, which was, at a sensory level, just like the fictional morning described. Southwest Virginia indeed has some unique weather, affected, as I’m told, by its sprawling mountain ranges. (They circle the Roanoke metro area.)
The rain yesterday was abrupt and shrieking. I posted on social media that I’d experienced “that eerie moment when the wind sounds strangely like the wailing of children.” So hence the poem that I finished (?) tonight. I think a lot of my friends will find it funny; they certainly were laughing at my poet’s melodrama yesterday. One said it was a nice turn of phrase, too — and that it could be the start of a story.
I’ve never written what I’ve considered a “horror poem” before. (“The Writer” in 2013 was never intended as such, anyway.) But the genre is alive and well, at least in the small presses. Horror poetry is frequently requested in the calls for submissions you can find on Facebook’s various “Open Calls” pages, anyway. (And if you’re an indie writer, those pages are great to peruse anyway.)
I hope you enjoyed the piece.]
Photo credit: By Huhu Uet (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
Towers Shopping Center, Roanoke, Virginia
Clearly this shopping center lies along the path of The Beam.
Only Stephen King fans will get that joke.
There are at least two cool places to grab lunch there — McAlister’s Deli and Firehouse Subs. Unless I’m mistaken, we don’t have those chains in New York.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 