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. 

When first reading this poem, I was attracted by the rhyme scheme, and the poem’s set up. Similar to “Digging” this poem describes the work of his father, and how he had trouble following the same path. He once struggled behind his father both in the field and in other aspects, but now his father is having a hard time keeping up. This poem has many references to the sea with the use of “full sail strung” (2) and “hob-nailed wake” (13) among others.

This poem consists of six quatrains, each line with eight to nine syllables. Within the poem, the second and fourth line of each stanza rhyme, as well as the slight rhyme of lines one and three, depending on the pronunciation. In stanza three, Heaney rhymes “round” and “ground” in lines 1 and 3, and in stanza four “sod” and “plod” in the 2^nd and 4^th lines.  In the last stanza, the author continues the metaphor that runs throughout the poem, as his father is now “stumbling behind [him}” (23) in a figurative manner. This is instead of the years when the narrator had “stumbled in his [father’s] hob-nailed wake” (13) while growing up and wanting to join him in the field. “Follower” uses a great deal of imagery to leave the reader with a sense of the scene in mind, in stanza three, I can imagine the “the sweating team turned round and back into the land.” And the narrator’s “eye narrowed and angled at the ground, mapping the furrow exactly” (9-12).