Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

And there are the clothes you dropped, the arms of a green shirt
raised in surrender, the slough of nylon
and a dress of apricot wool.
Sit up and see the sheets fine wired with pubic hair and eyelashes,
skin cells scattered like flakes of pre-history.

Your clothes have been going out of fashion,
quickly like the turning of a pear, slowly like a bone bleaching. No matter,
pick up the leather boots you loved so much,
zip them right up to the knee and walk;
you are Jairus’s daughter, passing through
the convalescent house, its shelves of misremembered books,
its shivers of dust.

What else is there to do but open windows, let the outside tumble in
like washing from a glorious machine. See
the day is half over, but still blue. Step out and balance
on the ledge. Below a brown bird darts
over the garages, another yanks a worm from its clay bed
and flies with it – fly worm, fly!

Your leg hair stands to gold attention. Courage now, step out,
feel the plummet, then the catch and
you’re up, swimming in cold, eyes streaming.
There is the park where you broke your wrist, there is the church
where you first met God and the playground of children
whose children are running through cities now, as the river
runs, a silver speck, coursing

underneath the disappearing viaduct, running through the valley passing
fields where horses gather, trapped in their nature.
The houses reposition themselves
and there are your arms, the arms
that used to be useless, parting pale belts of cloud.