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 the breaking.
 At the headrig, with a single pluck

 Of reins, 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 round 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)