Midnight in Caravanland
Ross Thompson
When you switched off the television, the sound continued
to play
like a jazz standard half-remembered, a twinge in the brain,
a needle lost in the hay.
You pulled on a jacket, and slipped into a night crackling
with static
and the promise of rain. The moon was high. Playground railings
contracted
and creaked as they leaked out the remainder of the day’s heat.
The air parted like velveteen as you followed the noise
of revelry
wafting like a mistral: the magnified whispers and moans
reverberating
within a dome of cloudless sky. Disembodied voices
beckoned you
to the promenade: the curved spine of a sleeping giant
cradling the reflection
of a coruscating universe resting on pin pricks.
Beside the shore, a lone bonfire flickered in the water,
around which
footloose figures gallivanted, wavering as they slipped
through each
other, sharing thin strips of glowing embers that they raised
to hidden lips.
Squinting, you snapped the tableau into focus, then balanced
the flickering
flame on your fingertip. A magic trick. A geocache
of image and sound
only you found then gifted back to the trembling darkness
when you closed your fist.
Shell
By Ross Thompson
My sister said
that if I held
the dislodged nautilus
to the side of my head
I would hear the wash
of a distant ocean
as if eavesdropping
on a private conversation.
Although I knew it wasn’t
really the sea
but the sound of my own breath
I listened
nonetheless.
Once I unlocked that box
by holding the conch
to my ear like a receiver
I became a true believer.
There was no way to stop
the secrets of remote shores
roaring forth.
I should have known
that not every open door
is an invitation.
Ross Thompson
Ross Thompson is a writer and Arts Council award recipient from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His debut poetry collection Threading The Light is published by Dedalus Press. His work has appeared on television, radio and the Poetry Jukebox alongside a wide range of publications such as Atrium, Dear Reader, The Honest Ulsterman, Lunate, Neologism, One, Popshot and The Trouvaille Review. Most recently, he wrote and curated A Silent War, a collaborative audio response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has been adapted by Northern Ireland Screen into a series of short archival films. He is currently preparing a second full length book of poems.
Photo credit: Hanny Naibaho
Apricot Press 