Eric Robert Nolan- A Poem

A Churchgoer Passes My Yard on Sunday Morning

She seems

smart and responsible, somehow. 

There’s assurance in her

brisk and purposeful pace,

passing in her bright Peach,

trim and tailored suit.

I see no sanctimony, only

commitment to some task.

There’s order all about her.  I picture

parishes of prompt accountants. 

She has an incongruity

with my unordered lawn

as she passes in Peach.

The high and wild Green

is how I ornament

my unmarried days.

My lawn is in constant apostasy.

It has lost its faith

in the arrival of mowers

and conscientious owners.

This morning, my secular pen

serves its agnostic art;

her spiritual path

serves her salvation.

The high and unkempt grass

is my Green aesthetic.

Archetypes scuttle like beetles

over soil soft and dark --

as deep and as concealing as

the Jungian collective.

Bright dandelions

announce themselves in Yellow –

nascent ideas

pleading to be plucked,

as bright as the sun, as bright

as the pious’ Peach-colored suit.

Each stands over secrets –

Each stems up

from an interminable Earth

deep and vast and dark.

Under tectonic plates,

Magma burns in its belly.

In all our buried selves

-- down deep –

Is there heat sufficient

To soften stone?

Maybe next week I’ll engage her.

None of that nonsense

about “The Culture War.”

We’re both human.

We both stand over secrets.  Beneath us,

miles below, is magma.

Red rock runs in bright burning currents.

Were the lions facing Daniel any different

than the Lion that Auden envisioned

in “The Sea and the Mirror,”

insatiable and

ravenous for metaphor?

Or perhaps I’ll ask her about

The snake that troubled Adam.

It spoke, didn’t it?

Were there verses in its mouth?

Did its tongue

hint at inner dichotomies?

Of half-realized fears and unwanted memories?

Might it have crept

down from The Tree of Knowledge

onto a poet’s lawn 

where it riddled in rhyme?

Does it tempt me now

with inflicted insight?

In her saved soul and my newest muse,

we stand over secrets; we both 

concern ourselves with serpents.

Magma burns in our hearts.

Bio:

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.   He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia.  His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress.   Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations.

Eric’s poetry has been featured by Every Day Poets, Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, Dead Snakes and elsewhere.  His short story, “The Disappearance of Little Tommy Drummond,” will be featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog in the coming months.