Gabriola Elementary School Playground

by P.C. Vandall

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Mother may I?

 

That's the moment I think of –teetering

in mid-air between one world and the next,

not knowing if I'm coming or going.

I hang from a gang plank of monkey bars

 

with a sea of children below me. They slide

down a sea serpent's tongue, scuttle like crabs and soar above the great barrier reef

of chain link fence on a metronome of swings.

 

Thoughts tilt-a-whirl back to my mother.

She's the daisy petal that loves me not,

the dandelion stem with the head popped off and the cracks I step over so she'll come back.

 

I'm the shadow she casts out, long and lean

like a maypole but dark like the merry-

go–round that's sick of being pushed around. Would it sting less if I ate a baby

 

bumble bee or crossed to the other slide?

I am not --The Little Engine that Could

and 'I think I can' is a train of thought

that left the station in a huff. I can't

 

hold on forever, can't grasp that she's gone.

I feel the rip tide. I count waves like breath,

collect them like thoughts and unfurl fingers from the bars. It's high tide --I let her go.