Rooms by the Sea by Ross Thompson, written in Bangor during Lockdown 2020
after Edward Hopper
This inverted space croons like an ocarina
as a cat’s paw sweeps through my careening
beachside home, suspended, as if by balloons,
past billowing waters and shifting dunes
to the great beyond. Slow days were once infrequent.
Now, it tastes all the more sublime to relinquish
the interminable daily grind and embrace
a more forgiving pace: the incantation of waves,
salt and wind. The interplay of the world without
and the one within would make me a devout
acolyte if I were not an anchorite
yet the silken way in which morning light
spreads like sap across the floor’s geometry
affirms afresh the day’s perfect symmetry.
Given the choice, I would not trade all of this
for a free pass to Shangri-La or Atlantis.