Portrait of a Man

He was a young lad
Just barely fourteen
When his father died.
His mother lived on,
But her will to carry on
Was lost,
So she wasn’t much help
To the boy.
He would have liked
To have continued
His education,
But that was
Never to be.
He had to stay home
And work the farm
And learn to be a man.
He raised his younger
Brothers and sisters
As best he could,
And made sure
Each one had
The opportunity
He never got himself.
He worked miracles
On that impoverished
And scraggly homestead,
And somehow managed
To scrape by
And put every one
Of his siblings
Through school
And on into college,
For there was no man alive
Who knew the value
Of what he didn’t have
More than he.