I am following, Mr. Heany

There are similarities between your father and mine, Mr. Seamus Heany. Your father worked with a horse plough, mapping the furrow exactly, somewhere in Ireland. Mine used a garden fork and spade in a place where the soil had the color of bricks and rain was prayed for. But he was a perfectionist like yours. You, Mr. Heany, were a nuisance, tripping, falling, yapping always, stumbling in your father's hob-nailed wake. My father was the nuisance, finding me wherever I was: ''There's something I want to show you. Come.'' It was the era of obedience, no excuses, no sulking. So I went, and he showed me young beans and spinach and the barely visible hue of carrot tops at his feet — everything I disliked on my plate. But now he, too, keeps stumbling behind me, and will not go away.
Read less