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108
Running with My Sons
Fifty-one runs with nineteen and twenty-three
Thinking "by hap of happy hap," the phrase
Cast by the crude old Tudor well displays
The kinship of happiness and luck ... I see
From the corner of my eye how springily
The boys are striding, how their breathing stays
Easy and light. Not so with them always,
Both once rode crutches after surgery.
We round the second point and they run on
Into the haze, down beach I've never run,
While I turn back, and think of how that stretch
They're running is like the years I'll never reach;
And think helplessly, how will it be for them?
It'll be the same and sharply not the same.