Through all This by Kate Rutter

Описание: Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2021
Poet’s Biography
Kate has an MA in writing from Sheffield Hallam. Her pamphlet, Storyboard, has just been Highly Commended in The Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition judged by Pascal Petit and Daljit Nagra. Kate has been an actor in film, TV theatre and radio for 40 years.

Poem’s Description / Inspiration
This is very much a lockdown poem. It’s inspiration, I suppose, is how a family deals with the pain of forced separation. A woman’s love for her child is an unbreakable bond even in the time of Covid.

Poem Text
Through All This

I’ve loved sleeplessness: sunrise
creeping over a Sheffield hill.

I’ve loved your screen face, far away
and buffering but still yours.

I’ve loved the shock of your hair
clipped to the length of a skull cap.

I’ve loved that when I picked up it was you
and though you chided yourself

for crying in a car park,
I loved that you felt you could.

I’ve loved the book about molluscs
my sister and brother-in-law sent

and the astonished snails I carried
to higher ground after reading it.

I’ve loved the cheerful deliveries,
the substitutions I always accept.

I’ve loved Maureen next door being
wheeled out to smoke her way through it.

I’ve loved the rain, the cleansing rain,
the sheer, flattening weight of it

and the mud that almost stole my boot
in Monsal Dale and the bilberries

foraged that day that would do us good,
their juice purple as renewed blood.