I have been blessed to have two wonderful fathers. My own dad, and Julie's. They have both taught me wonderful things about life and living and the Lord.
There is a place where I write about these two men. It's a personal blog I started fifteen years ago called "Patterns of Ink" (the title is explained at the blog). Finding these stories is not not like reading a book because at a blog the chapters written last end up on the top of the heap, so you have to scroll down in the month or click back to earlier months to find the first chapter, and that's where the story begins.
Personal blogs are like old barns--a hodgepodge of old and new. You may find a mower still warm from work or something so rusted it has no practical use but the magic of holding a memory. Naturally, there are far more stories at my Patterns of Ink about my own father than my father-in-law, but they are both remarkable men in their own right.
In this post, I will direct your attention to the man who built the barn in this video, and the man who left this earth too soon it seems to straiten out his barn for strangers to see.
The story behind the video is this: My father died just weeks before turning 67 in the year 1995, but my mother lived on at the old homestead until her passing in 2007. Then for several years, the five children (all grown with families of their own) waited and wondered what to do with the place we all called home. It's strange how five adults who all have homes of their own can call another place "home" without the slightest hint of incongruity. I suspect many readers here know exactly what I mean. Perhaps, you too have experienced that final letting go that comes years after letting go of those who made a farm, or a cottage, or some other plot of land feel more like home than anywhere else on earth. Then comes the dreaded decision to sell because, after all, life is lived in the present even when made meaningful by our past.
A few weeks before the estate sale, I went back to the old barn with a video camera to capture these images to use as backdrop to a poem I had written for Dad many years before. I used the instrumental song by Randy Newman called, "A Father Makes a Difference" in the back ground.
To some the barn may look a mess, but to me it is beautiful because so many things are just as my father had left them all those years before. The only thing missing was the tractor (which we sold to my Uncle Bob.) Toward the end of the short video, you'll see an aluminum canoe in the rough-hewn rafters. That canoe was presented to him at his retirement party many years before. If you look closely, you'll see that the video "double exposes" at that moment to show Dad building the barn way back in 1969. Of all the poems I've ever written and all the videos I've ever compiled, these are probably the most meaningful to me. To read one of the chapters and the story behind this barn Click here.
Analysis of this poem by Dr G.E. Mini, Professor of Literature at Ayai University. (Added 12-27-2025).
1. Technical Structure: The "Hammer and Echo"
The poem’s strict formal constraints—the ABAB rhyme scheme and the 8/4 alternating syllable count—mirror the very subject matter of the poem: disciplined, methodical work.
• The 8-Syllable Line (The Action): These lines carry the weight of the narrative and the physical description. They represent the "task" or the "span."
• The 4-Syllable Line (The Echo): These shorter lines act like a quick breath or the final strike of a hammer. They offer a moment of reflection or a sharp clarification of the line preceding them.
• The Rhyme Scheme: The consistent rhyme provides a sense of structural integrity. Just as a barn or a bridge must be square and true, the poem is built with "flesh and form and line."
Syllabic Breakdown Example
2. The Conflict of "Pen vs. Tool"
Knowing that Kapanka’s father was both a data technician and a heavy laborer (building bridges and digging 35-foot wells) adds immense weight to the second stanza.
The poet notes that he sees his father’s hands most clearly not when he is doing "manly" chores, but in the quiet moments: “when / my lamp-lit fingers press a page / or hold a pen.” There is a poignant irony here. The son inherited the physical form of the builder, but uses them for the intellectual work of the writer.
He asks a central, haunting question: Does hard work alone give hands their worth? He suggests that for a dream to truly "take root," it requires more than just inspiration; it requires "sweat mixed with earth."
3. Humility and the Scale of Achievement
The second half of the poem shifts into a confession of humility. Kapanka characterizes his own efforts as "child’s play." * The Contrast: While his father cleared 14 acres and built a family home, the speaker describes his own "endeavors" as things he might otherwise never try.
• The Visual Connection: The poem concludes with a beautiful image of the speaker finishing a task and stretching his arms toward the "setting sun." In that specific light—the "glow"—the distance between the two men closes.
At "an arm's length," the distinction between the son's hands and the father's strength disappears. It is a moment of spiritual communion.
4. The Context of the Gift
The fact that Tom gave this to his father the Christmas before he died transforms the poem into a eulogy delivered while the subject was still there to hear it. It serves as a validation of the father’s "toil." By acknowledging that his father’s work was "more than child's play," Tom tells his father that his sacrifices—the bridges, the well, the barn—were seen and deeply respected. It is an admission that while the son may not have moved the same amount of earth, he carries the "flesh and form" of the man who did, ensuring the father's strength lives on in the son’s "span and grasp."
[Dr. G.E.Mini is the fictional name I’ve created for Google’s Gemini AI program which I use only for guest analysis of selected poems written long before such programs existed.]
