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

Oh how I wish I could recall the story
from the bank of hooks around us
- still there, oh yes, she never discards,
she sorts, she assesses, she repairs
- they will do for another year, like her.

We sit around on the floor, the smallest
- how I wish I could remember my turn
in her lap, two plus room for the book
- down on the threadbare carpet too,
our size, treating us as equals even then.

Dressing down and soft, safe, enveloped
- we were a dozen, probably more
on the floor of the nursery schoolroom
- wriggling, entwining, thumbs in
mouths, heads on other shoulders.

She would be called an earthmother now
- her face locked in curls of hair
plaited sometimes, smart though, she had to be
- at home in loose shifts, night shifts
she never ever got away from us and hers.

We came first before her own - practice
pieces, apprentice pieces. I know
her children, grown now, good people,
never felt second best, never felt
it was a test of her loyalty, teaching us.

A young woman, rounded back like nurses’ calves
- an ache for life she never let us see
the exhaustion, the longing for an intellect a little
more formed; screaming to get through
the glass schoolroom door, out to herself,

out on to the spacey moor barefoot on rock
- I remember her bare feet black on the dusty floor,
remember playing in the huge enamel sink,
painting early Lowrys at the three-year-size tables,
throwing tantrums - but we always attended

when she opened a book. A sort of magic in that,
that made us stop sailing boats, splashing in water
but still love stories - surrogate for our mothers’ stories.
I wish I could remember which
- I wish I could include my father’s.