Visit the historic Lancashire Textile Project with over 500 photos and 190 taped interviews|2|0
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allotmentgirl
Regular Member


82 Posts
Posted -  23/03/2010  :  23:12
My son is 11 and has been studying this poem at school, It's by Simon Armitage.
I really like the way the tape measure depicts the  Mother letting go of the child allowing the child to grow and to eventually go off into life on his/her own. I love the analogy.
Have a read

Mother, any distance greater than a single span

requires a second pair of hands.

You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,

the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors.

 

You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording

length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving

up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling

years between us. Anchor. Kite.

 

I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb

the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something

has to give;

two floors below your fingertips still pinch

the last one-hundredth of an inch...I reach

towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky

to fall or fly.




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