heir racing gates, waiting for the run to start. We can almost hear the snorting noses and the pawing feet. This aggressive competitiveness is also shown by the "small fights breaking out and calming", again like horses in a pen, waiting for release. There is an excitement that continues to build as the boys speak to each other, in tense words filled with simple masculine competitiveness, trying to one-up each other. Nervousness is implied in the line "they clear their throats a lot". We know that something is going to take place, something significant and important in the lives of the mother and the boy.Still, through this, the mother sees the children, especially her own son, as fairly innocuous, only posturing as men, but still calm, like "a room full of small bankers". They may be men, she seems to say, but they are gentlemen, and harmless at that. The macho posturing becomes more tangible and tense when one older boy says to a younger one "I could beat you up". This statement puts the reader and the speaker on guard, aware that a change is taking place. One can almost see the mother perk up her ears.The two boys in potential combat stand in front of "the dark cake, round and heavy as a turret". This is an illusion to a medieval turret, a sort of Trojan horse used to smuggle in ancient warriors or destructive weapons, to take over a village or city or kingdom. We wonder what surprise this turret holds for the poem's speaker. It seems to symbolizes the mother's anticipation as well as our own. The two boys stand in front of the dark turret, like knights ready to joust. They eye each other like fighters in a ring, ready for combat.Until now, the mothers views her son as innocent and youthful, but his future actions are anything but that. "Freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks" symbolizes the mother's view that her son remains a baby, delicate as a sweet batter, ready to be baked up into muffins. His youth is symbolized by the...
