My Dad.

I've written a couple of poems about my dad in the past, but it's hard to put into words what I feel about someone that has shaped almost every aspect of me. I read this poem awhile ago, and while it doesn't reflect how I feel about my dad, it does mirror my feelings about our ageing and how I am scared that I may just be a carbon-copy of him? Or that he is now an emotional burden to me? It could also touch on how upset I am to see my father no-longer able to be the great man that he was. But sadly, he was never a great man to begin with. But I still like this poem. And I still love my dad.

FOLLOWER

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reigns, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

Seamus Heaney