Eric Robert Nolan- A Poem

Together, Spying Cardinals in the Snow

Together, spying cardinals in the snow,

you ask me

if it's crimson sorcery,

the manner in which

their alate frames

make furtive flames

flashing,

mid-air,

momentary roses, racing

fleeting 'V's, speeding

eye-height,

at morning light,

manic scarlet letters?

And I here I was

ever the ready pedant,

already snatching at Latin,

finding families from memory,

reaching for genuses, species.

"Cardinalis Cardinalis,"

I dryly recite

In tones as cold as the snow,

Amanda, Dear, you know

how nomenclature comforts me,

how I like to confine

images to categories,

visions into ordered words,

feelings to their well-deserved

lexical cells. Fearing them,

I make locks from similes,

manacles from metaphors,

prisons out of assonance.

Ever-present measured meter

Is a vigilant warden.

Emotions, so sentenced,

are convicts at the stocks.

Publication makes

a neurotic victory -- 

"See here," I tell all,

the writer as proud jailor,

"What I've confined to page."

I pen deadbolts.

Chapters incarcerate.

Life is a locked book.

Nocturnally, they creep,

lithe, limber felons -- 

catlike colors through the bars

thinning red escapees to commit

Misdemeanor spectrums in my dreams.

"You have a word for everything,"

the flash of your half-smile -- 

that angular dip in your red lips

is like a scarlet cardinal

leaning in its flight.

"So, tell me," you repeat,

your half-joking query,

"Is it a kind of sorcery?

"Has magic made

"cardinals be our company?

"Are their quickened roses

"made by magic from enchanted trees?"

Magic --

an older language than Latin

instructs your erudite eye,

rich in the texts

of childhood's apocrypha:

all those lost books and invisible pages,

the tomes from which we evoked

sorcery as happy boys and girls.

As authoritative 

as any Church Cardinal,

we fashioned faerie,

invented their enchantments,

and then made heroes for their aid,

at the age of eight.

You've never forgotten.

I have.

You painted for me once

on a trip Out East,

drawing, as you're wont to do,

from magic.  Your blue hues

made a nascent moon.

Yellows yielded stars.

Errant reds raced

down your shirt in their escape

making a hasty cursive --

angled scarlet letters --

the 'V's" of diving birds, perhaps

or maybe "L's for Love.

When all of your

various roses elope, you only 

let them go.

You easily release the reds: 

they're only innocent dissidents.

You are an open book

and pages of flaming magenta.

We are

Together, spying cardinals in the snow.

My Love, you are my better, though.

Where dry science constrains

and skepticism cages,

You're adept with red 

spectrums.  All your spells

color the cold air

and liberate the day -- 

with skyward scarlets,

furtive quickened roses,

manic magentas,

crimson sorcery.

(c) Eric Robert Nolan, 2014 

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

Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1997, as a grants, public relations and speech writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations.  His feature writing included articles in Vim and Vigor Magazine, and Eric designed and taught curricula for grant writing training courses for healthcare professionals.

Eric’s debut novel is the postapocalyptic science fiction story, “The Dogs Don’t Bark In Brooklyn Any More.”  It was published by Dagda Publishing on November 19th, 2013, and is available at Amazon.com both in paperback and for Kindle.  This will be the first of a series of books entitled “The Wolf War Saga.”

Eric’s poetry and short stories have been featured by Dagda Publishing, Every Day Poets, Every Day Fiction, Illumen, Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dead Snakes, The Bright Light Cafe, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere.  His poems were also included in anthology format in Dagda Publishing’s “Threads” in September 2013.  Eric’s science fiction/horror short story, “At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal,” was published in January 2014 in Dagda’s short story anthology, “All Hail the New Flesh.”