Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 21–22
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
- The speaker admits he was just getting in the way while his father worked (we weren't going to say anything, but yeah that was pretty obvious).
- He wasn't much help to his dad, chatting and tripping all over his freshly-plowed field. MVP of plowing was just not in the cards for him.
- At the end of line 22, we're snapped back into the future with "today," and we get a hint in "But" that things have changed.
Lines 23–24
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
- Now that the speaker (son) is all grown up, and his father is an old man, his dad struggles to keep up with his son.
- The father is probably stumbling because, as an older person, he's not as sure on his feet as he used to be. It's now the son's turn to lead the way, and he's mildly irritated at the father, who struggles to keep up. My, how the tables have turned.
- The second part of the final line, "and will not go away" works a couple of ways: first, that his father is a little bit of a pest now, much like he was when he was a kid stumbling behind him in the fields. The second more below-the-surface meaning gets at how deeply tied they are to one another—that their father and son bond is something unbreakable, something that will not go away, regardless of how circumstances may change.
- Hmm. Maybe he's not such a pest after all.