Mother,+any+distance+greater+than+a+single+span

Mother, any distance greater than a single span[[image:http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/astronaut-2.jpg width="320" height="240" align="right"]]
Mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands. You come to help 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 inch...I reach towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky to fall or fly.


 * Simon Armitage **