Poems by Laura Thompson

I dream of death
I watch the burial from a nearby tree
which bends above the six-foot hole.
From the wooden vault, I see the sun
through closed lids. I can see its scowl;
burning redder than my father’s fury.
Hand in hand, friends and family moan.
For them, it will be an endless death.
They pray, as I, Prey to the morning blaze,
am scorched in death
through mahogany finish.

Lilies conceal the staleness of demise,
just as much; the smell
of tiredness on my mother’s clothes.
Now she dusts the tomb with a silk
handkerchief, waves off the dirt and surrenders
to grief. My father shawls
an arm around her shoulder. Simultaneously,
I feel the same tender touch. Here is love;
unconditional, even in the afterlife. Now,
he too is watching from a nearby tree
bending above the six-foot grave,
encasing a body no longer mine.
“Look after your mother”
he whispers to me, but only his cold breath lingers
upon my lobe and I take his place round
my mother’s shoulder. It is not my death
and no longer a dream, but at least in dream
you live.



Northern Angel

In between
an angel and her land
is a question;
a question of reflection or deflection.
Does the industrial goddess
reflect or deflect
her peoples own narratives?
Do they bow
before the rusting angel
of rusting angels
in awe or in indifference?
Are steel wings a sense of self-esteem
coated in neighbourly efficacy?
Or, does she mark a territory
and draw a line from alien?