Digging
By: Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into 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 drills
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 any other man on Toner's 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 neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the 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.
I initially tried to go looking for another poem to
do my "Favorite Poem Blog" on, but could not get this one out of my
head. Even though it is not a particularly long poem, I just felt like it had
so much packed into it, and every time I read it I get something knew out of
it. I loved the somewhat ambiguous tone that Heaney set, where at the beginning
I was not sure if he held resentment toward his family before him, or held them
in high regards. The diction used is so simple when you break it down
individually, but together produces a much more complex and deeper meaning. I
can so vividly see a young man looking out a bedroom window having flashbacks
of his family’s history. The detailed sound and visual words like rasping,
stooping, sloppily, and digging really brought the poem to life. Then the fifth
line from the end was my favorite where he alludes to his roots. There is so
much meaning and symbolism in that short phrase. I read it as though he does
not want any part of the literal "roots" that his grandfather and
father worked with, but that their story would always be a part of his
"roots" and where he came from.
I am a person who holds my family’s history and
heritage very dear to my heart. My mom has passed down her love for genealogy
to me and I think that is why this poem resonates so well with me. When my great
grandfather came over from Greece his family opened a small diner in Hot
Springs, Arkansas where they were famous for their “3 Way Lunch Platter” (chili,
spaghetti, and cheese). My grandfather did not carry on the tradition of the
restaurant business; he instead made a better life for himself and went on to
medical school. He did however keep the recipe and it continues to be our
Christmas Eve meal each year. I may never reopen the “Pappas Brothers
Restaurant” but I will forever hold onto that recipe and always allow my roots
to be a part of me and of my future family.
