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

Three cedars hoard time's secrets in their safe -
giant trees in which woodpigeons are asleep,
while your daughter searches for the shoes
she left up there, her climbing feet soft as moths,
as if she'd been a chimneysweep in another
life, or a sailor on a ghost-ship. Her touch

could heal distance in those who seldom touch
deliberately, though sometimes, to be safe
crossing the rough lane, one might guide the other
by the elbow, or in the embargo of sleep
your fingers might settle on his thigh like moths
grazing in the wardrobe on old tennis shoes.

Both of you hugging her, promising new shoes,
could you not re-learn the daylight side of touch,
spring-clean your house, expel the grizzled moths,
discover alone together one day you were safe
in each other's love again? When hope falls asleep
your dreams reply, Not while you're loved by another.

Your son and daughter entertain each other
clattering all afternoon in their parents' shoes,
rehearsing first-aid. However, when they sleep-
walk it's to you they come, as if your touch
has taught them how they could be always safe -
a gentle lamp that grants immunity to moths.

Here for your son's a yellowing book on moths
to grace a resting footballer's summer in another
part of the wood that feels unexpectedly safe,
albeit in the meeting-place of socks and shoes
wood-spiders dimple cotton so you feel their touch
on your ankle. If this book should teach him to sleep

with the light off, you might drift into sleep
yourself and summon me here to grade the moths'
benevolent powers, how they put us in touch
with our courage, urge us to allow each other
the flit of our own lives, in sensible shoes,
in the labyrinth of aloneness learn to be safe.

Though when the park's asleep it seems almost safe
to touch, we'd no more brush against each other
than two moths would, or one person's two shoes.