Digging...........
Between the finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound, when the spade sinks into the gravelly ground:My father digging, I look down.
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds, Bends low, comes up twenty years away, Stooping in rhythm through potato drill, Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep, To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day Than another man on Toners bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle, Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up to drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing, heaving sods over his shoulder, going down and down for the good turf, Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat, teh curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head, But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.
This is my favorite poem by an Irish Poet called Seamus Heaney, he was born in county Derry in Northern Ireland, and has won a Nobel Prize for literature. He has also taught at Harvard university and Berkeley, California. I don't know why this poem moves me so, I guess because I think that Readings are like digging, so I feel I have no pen, or shovel, I have my cards so I will dig with them :-)
joan