Compare the ways relationships with parents are presented in mother, any distance and one other poem.
mother, any distance greater than a single span
requires a second pair of hands.
you come to 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 reach
towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky
to fall or fly.