Dig It

This is one of my favorite poems to read with freshmen.  It's rich, accessible, and every year students find new meanings and connections that I haven't seen before.  I think the first time I read it was as a senior in high school in AP Lit. with Mr. Desmond (who was a big fan of Heaney and all things both Irish and literary).  Some of these college professors love teaching it too.  Like I said, rich and accessible on many levels.  (Don't click the link until you read the poem a couple of times and give yourself a chance to think about it).  Enjoy.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; 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 dep
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 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, going down and down
For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, 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.

                                      --Seamus Heaney (1966)