Follower

 My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.

The horse 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 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.

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