like Tennyson's eagle
I look down on my younger self.

Far below me
a young man

is setting out in life.
Hope fills his sails.

Little fool, I say,
he has no idea.

But then I remember
the joke's on me.

If only I could stop him,
swoop down from my vantage point

of impotent knowledge,
and seize the twenty-year-old brat

I once was
in my disparaging claws.

"If you'd seen what I see,"
I'd ask,

"would you have done things differently?"
And he replies

"Like it or not
for worse and for better

you are my me.
We are mates for life.

You are the price I paid."
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