What was respectable during childhood?
Mother’s acceptable behaviors
clashed with Grandmom’s, Daddy’s mom.
And I took after Grandmom and the rejection rubbed off.
As far as writing poems, Mother did.
I can’t imagine Grandmon’s, though she played piano by ear
and sang. We know the admirable aptitudes around us
and we carry the judgmental assessments long after.
When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
But have we? Do we still cringe when we act
against parental mores? Do we now believe…
or can we…that childish things can be put away?