Mother, Any Distance

• • Anchor. Kite
• What does the caesura show?

  The separation between the mother and child
• • The acres of walls, the prairies of the floors
• • You at the zero end, me with the spool of tape
• • I space-walk through the empty bedrooms
• • A hatch that opens on an endless sky to fall or fly
• • Simon Armitage 2001
• • Conveys powerful parental relationship
• First two stanzas open with direct address to mother but the final stanza switches to personal pronoun 



  shows he is now the focus
• Single word sentences and caesura 


  convey apprehension
• Ellipsis in final stanza 


  conveys uncertainty
• Family love/ admiration 


  climbing my grandfather, follower or walking away