Lines 1-6

It seems at first that the speaker is missing his father because he expresses a wish to say things to him. However, in line 3, it becomes apparent that it is his father's voice the son misses. He remembers it as a physical thing coming from his father's body. His father's voice becomes through the image of his "chest" a solid physical entity stronger than that "thin chest."

Line 7

This line provides a powerful transition between the two stanzas. The father's voice in the first stanza is speaking to his son, and what is to follow is the persona's "song" to his father, the poem that tells the story developed out of the memories. The two words, however, "son" and "song," by their closeness to one another in sound and sight, communicate that the persona himself understands that he is, in a way, his father's "song" by...