Waning.

Today I spent a really lovely hour discussing and writing about ‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney with a group of 15yr olds.

I also had a wonderful chat with a colleague about T. S Eliot.

I know lots of you will understand how lucky I feel on days like this, even when I have been up since 5.

Sometimes my enthusiasm and energy wanes.

Write about an example of wax and wane in your life.

Rachael XXX

Follower

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

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 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 hobnailed 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

#wane #waxandwane #waningcrescent #scribbles #unrelatedrambles #spotthethread #writingcommunity #writingprompts #seamusheaney #follower #poetry #poet #moonpromot