Ying and Ying

At another 9 in the morning

We sat down at a different river

Dirty and foul, all the same.

I, a fully grown man with a scruff for a beard,

Asked my father, now with graying hair,

To let me go swim.

Promised him i wouldn’t wander too far off the shore

I couldn’t face another vehement rejection

And precisely enough, he did not choose his words

To hand me down a different no with the same concern 

Same words

Same expression

My face tensed differently, in an almost similar frown

And for the first time I reminded him that i had grown up a different man

And then went on to swim in the murk

With strangers

It was just another 9 in the morning

I came back from the marsh

Wet and glittering, 6 feet tall,

And i saw the same father

Waiting by the same shore

For the same son to return

From the only difference in so many years

I did not understand the folly in my courage

He did not care for the courage in my folly