Eric Robert Nolan- Two Poems

Amanda

Greenwich grows cold

Early in January.

The lights on the affluent avenue

Dim a little in

The great, gray, and opaque

Gauntlet of early night,

Chilling a quaint Connecticut.

This midwinter street

Has all its doors adorned.

The colorful shops and boutiques

Are still convivial, with

The festive season.  Each

Door resembles a gift.

Brightly, gaily lit,

And traced with laurel.

Janus, God of Doors,

God of Bridges, God of

Vision and hindsight both –

What better a month’s motif

For me in my apostasy

Than a two-faced God?

Garrulous, I arrive

Drugged to the eyes:

Swimming in cheap caffeine,

Smelling of nicotine,

All doped up

On the intellectual chic:

Jefferson’s exhortation

About “the price of freedom,”

Christopher Hitchens’ analyses.

Sonnets once softened

Footfalls around my bed.

Scribbled on reams, my dreams

Cushioned a hardwood floor

In my apartment in Queens,

At the age of 33.

Gone is the Bard of my summers.

Gone is the young man’s heart.

Gone is the carefree verse.

Gone is inculpable art.

This winter day

The poem in my pocket

Is a militant tract.

The door where I arrive

Is inscripted, “Caroline’s Coffees.”

It’s Blue. 

The little pedant in me

Ponders its use of the plural.

Within, the wealthy lament

The traffic at the Whitestone Bridge.

The flavor of aged grapes mates

With the delectable scents

Of their expensive coffee (“coffees?”)

Some winery among

The darkened Blue-blooded hills

Has struck some deal and now

Its twenty-something delegate

Offers me a taste.

To you, I move in haste.

Your peck at my cheek

Brings in the scents

Of tea, used books and irises.

Isn’t it just like you

To drink tea at a coffee house?

Irises. 

Knowing your favorite perfume

I’ve brought you one as a joke.  Its

Blue is the symbol for Faith, Belief.

Its White is for Purity.

Its deepening petals

Symbolize eloquence too.

I know these things from you.

After I brought you

Antipathy’s lexicon

You taught me the language of flowers.

“You’re misunderstanding Janus,”

You say patiently,

Raising the Blue porcelain

Again to your angular lips.

I love the way that they dip

Lithely down at their center

Vaguely making the shape

Of a swallow flying at dusk.

All your rebuttals fall

As softly as flower petals

On water.

“It isn’t a dichotomy.”

You tell me, gently suggesting

The eisegesis of

My own divided heart.

“It’s about transitions,

“Passages and changes.

“Janus is the God of Gates.

“One face looks

“Back to recall the past,

“One face looks

“To a new and better future.

“It’s about beginnings.

“The future is a Gift.”

Your fingers trace

Down the length of my jaw

As ivy is known to trace

The face of an aging edifice, and its

Slowly eroding stone.

All at once, your touch

Is as eloquent as Jefferson,

As judicious as Hitchens.

“Sometimes, Eric,” you tell me,

“To look back is to forgive.”

And at once you are my Blue,

My Belief, my Bridge

My Gift, and now my Gate,

The high and nearly blinding

Azure of my every

Nascent New Year

From this until the last,

Moving past each past,

Enshrined in memory here,

Like dried flower petals

In a favorite book.

If words ever fail me,

And I am consigned to arrive

At Auden’s “Lion’s Mouth,”

Ever unsated by poetry,

I will bring as sustenance,

My memories of you

And eloquence in flowers –

A poet struck dumb but holding

Fistfuls of irises.

© Eric Robert Nolan 2014

Elizabeth Mitchell Haiku:

Elizabeth Mit–
–chell, I suck at haiku. Please!
Love me anyway!

© Eric Robert Nolan 2014