Mother any distance Simon Armitage Direct address to

Mother any distance Simon Armitage

Direct address to his mother – he needs her ‘second pair of hands. ’ Perhaps metaphors for the features of life – relationships, career, opportunities etc. Mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands. You came to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors, the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors. metaphors Acres and prairies suggest huge expanses of space – reflecting the enormous size of the task.

Mum there at the beginning, the starting point. He is leaving home, becoming more independent. 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. Mum is the steady one, won’t budge, a fixed point. He is the kite, blowing in the wind. Allusion to an expedition with ‘base camp’ at the bottom always to return to.

Space – walking on air – on his own. Excited, not tied down, exploring new frontiers Enjambed line, but leaving ‘climb’ at the end of the line as a very active verb, helps with the sense of adventure I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something has to give; Tension between mother and child? The semi-colon marks the pause, balanced at the breaking point where the cord/connection between them may snap

Both inches and centimetres used in the poem – older generation’s terminology and the new. He is desperate for independence; ‘pinch’ shows mum is desperate to hold on. 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. He is free to make his own mistakes, the possibility of success or failure. Sense of infinity, the future stretching out before him