English resources/Love and Relationships/Parents and children
Parents and children in Love and Relationships
A father behind a plough. A mother with a tape measure. A son walking away. Most of these poems are a child looking at a parent, or a parent watching a child go.
The quotes
17 quotes, in the order they happen.
Like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Day-Lewis · Walking Away · parents and children · growing up · loss
His son walks off after a football match. Like a satellite torn loose. A father watching.
Half-fledged thing
Day-Lewis · Walking Away · parents and children · growing up
A bird not ready to fly. The son, seen from behind.
love is proved in the letting go
Day-Lewis · Walking Away · parents and children · growing up
The last line. Real love is letting them leave.
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock
Causley · Eden Rock · parents and children · memory · loss
His dead parents at a picnic, young again. He is old. They wait across a stream.
My father worked with a horse-plough
Heaney · Follower · parents and children · growing up
The first line. The boy watches his father plough. He wants to be him.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake
Heaney · Follower · parents and children · growing up
The boy trips along behind his father's big boots.
But today It is my father who keeps stumbling Behind me, and will not go away
Heaney · Follower · parents and children · growing up · loss
Now the father is old and the son cannot shake him off. The roles have swapped.
Anchor. Kite.
Armitage · Mother, any distance · parents and children · growing up
Two words. She holds him down, he wants to fly. A tape measure between them.
the last one-hundredth of an inch
Armitage · Mother, any distance · parents and children · growing up
They measure a room together. The tape runs out. He is about to leave.
to fall or fly
Armitage · Mother, any distance · parents and children · growing up
The last words. He reaches for the sky and does not know which it will be.
I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello
Duffy · Before You Were Mine · parents and children · memory
Duffy looks at a photo of her mother before she was born. She wanted that girl, the fun one.
The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?
Duffy · Before You Were Mine · parents and children · memory
The ten years before the baby arrived were the mother's best. Duffy knows it. She was the yell.
stamping stars from the wrong pavement
Duffy · Before You Were Mine · parents and children · memory
Her mother dancing, sparks from her heels, in the wrong place for a good girl.
from di stool each night she say
Nagra · Singh Song! · romantic love · parents and children
Every night his new wife sits on the stool and asks how much the moon costs. The poem is happy, and funny about it.
I decide to do it free, without a rope or net
Waterhouse · Climbing My Grandfather · parents and children · growing up
A child climbs his grandfather like a mountain, from the shoes up.
gasping for breath I can only lie watching clouds and birds circle
Waterhouse · Climbing My Grandfather · parents and children
At the top, on the old man's head, he lies down and looks at the sky.
the slow pulse of his good heart
Waterhouse · Climbing My Grandfather · parents and children
The last line. He can feel the heartbeat under him.
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