Tag Archives: Virginia

“Like White Plumeria Petal,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Your face will occasion the spaces
wherever I delay – prosaic places:
the sofa, the hall, the breakfast table
when slow new sun ascends in palette
of light against dark, you are with me,
observing the glowing morning,
sipping and smiling over coffee.
You, My Love, are always near,
for you are ever in reverie here.

Your arrival surprises me
at market among the rows
of pears and bright strawberries,
crates of crimson radiance,
and the hard and fragrant weights of apples,
their round and reddening-ember
emblems of autumn in bins.
You offer to buy some for me.
The curve of your hand falls over one
like white plumeria petal.
Unpredicted you appear,
For you are ever in reverie here.

When I pause at the park’s entrance,
piqued by inscrutable sculpture there,
you are on my arm again,
curious also at its
strange silver spades and towering contour,
the upward angled language of it,
its high iron hieroglyph.
You draw me close and joke
of Freud in girlish murmurs, your
quickened persistence of whimsy.
Your drollery will still adhere
For you are ever in reverie here.

Ever lovely, ever dear,
are ruminations I revere;
senses of you persevere,
for you are ever in reverie here.

© Eric Robert Nolan 2024



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Photo credit: Ashley Campbell, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Feeling thankful for what I have.

Food, a nice place to live in a city that I love, a wonderful girl and loads of good friends. A good portion of the world is not so lucky.

Perspective is a good thing.

Eschewing the Oxford comma — that’s something else I’m thankful for.



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Hot off the press from Ireland — The Galway Review 12.

I am currently enjoying The Galway Review’s annual anthology, The Galway Review 12 — which includes my poem, “The Beach House, Early Spring.”   (The piece was published online by the magazine in October 2023.)

This really is one of the nicest honors I’ve received as a poet.  The Galway Review is the city’s leading literary magazine, with more than a half a million readers worldwide, and I was included along with just seven other poets to see my work appear in this annual publication.  I remain quite grateful to the magazine’s editors for selecting my poem.

If you’d like to peruse the anthology, you can read it online for free right here.



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“Scattered like seeds” in Charlottesville, VA

Shared a little guerilla poetry in Charlottesville, Virginia this week with poetry mini-books, designed and produced by the fondly remembered, late  Robert Hansen at Poems-for-All.



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Photo collage from the “Bulletin of the Normal School for Women, Fredericksburg, Virginia, April, 1920”

“The Normal School for Women” later became Mary Washington College.  There is a pernicious rumor going around that it was subsequently named “The University of Mary Washington,” but we all know that couldn’t be right.

Anyway, you can view and enlarge this image here at Wikimedia Commons.



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The Patrick Henry, Roanoke, Virginia, February 2024

Formerly The Patrick Henry Hotel, it opened in 1925.  It’s got its own share of ghost stories, and one of them is pretty intense.

It kinda looks like it could be haunted, you know what I mean?



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Let’s Party on Valentine’s Day! (Troutville, VA)

Just a reminder — if you want to plan something special for Valentine’s Day, a friend of mine is helping to organize a really fun event in Troutville, Virginia.  Details below; you can buy tickets right here.



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Benny Marconi’s is the best pizza place in Roanoke.

Look at the size of that slice.  (I placed it next to that full-seized coffeepot for reference.)  And it doesn’t cost much either.

Granted, there is nothing quite like a slice of New York pizza, but this is a superlative effort.



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Are you looking for a fun Valentine’s Day event in the Troutville, VA, area? :-)

An alumnus and good friend of mine is helping to organize a party at the Pomegranate Gathering Place at 106 Stoney Battery Road.  Details are below; you can buy tickets right here.



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Poetry and commentary, 2024

Just FYI, if you’d like to keep track of my mad scribblings, I started a new page here at the blog for 2024 poetry and commentary.

You can find it right here.



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