Emma Large

 

We have wrestled hard into April, 

Through the bunched knuckles 

Of stonier-fisted months. Now,

 

Spring takes us with forgiveness,

Things feel leaner, my mother 

Looks at me with quiet eyes.

 

I stretch to meet 

What has opened in her:  

Tenderness that extends back to me

 

In the rawer light; draws our

Childhoods to touch, gently, 

Like two friends’ shoulders

 

Brushing together as they walk.

I’m not sure what is new and what

I have always known, or why

 

It took this to know it. I sit smoking

With her into spring dusk, until 

The linear wanes liminal: youth doesn’t

 

Come from strength, never floods

All at once; it glows and stutters in and

Out of this dimness, bruises freshen

 

This skin all the time. Old things take 

New shape; we stretch, come into line.