“Mother, may I . . . ?”
\nI recall the childhood game, and I
\nam transported
\nin time and place to my first innocent
\nlove, sticky taffy shared on the playground
\nwith Scotty, curly haired boy,
\na kid with attitude and spunk, later made a
\nrobot by ADHD meds, struggling to awaken and recognize
\na friend like me, another kid
\nwith attitude, but whose parents’
\nlove allowed for more freedom, less control
\nin growth and play. I
\nam reminded of him in my grandson, and
\nI will play the old game once more:
\n“Mother, may I . . . ?”<\/p>\n
*First line of Tanith Lee’s book “The Silver Metal Lover,” repeated forward and backward both here in the first word of each line of this poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Mother, may I . . . ?” I recall the childhood game, and I am transported in time and place to my first innocent love, sticky taffy shared on the playground with Scotty, curly haired boy, a kid with attitude and spunk, later made a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71199,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71073\/revisions\/71199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}