Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; 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 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.

I was first attracted to this poem because of the title, I was interested in what way the author would describe “digging”. I found this poem interesting because the author uses figurative language to describe how he is the third generation to “dig”. His grandfather dug turf, his father dug up potatoes, and now he is learning to dig in another sense. He is writing his story, bringing back his past.

In his writing, Seamus Heaney uses many literary devices including enjambments on many occasions, where one line of poetry flows into the next without the use of a period, carrying on the meaning. Examples of this are seen in lines 1-2, 3-4, 6-9. In one instance he has one stanza flowing into the next very effectively to tie his thoughts together.

This is a narrative poem that tells a story as the poem progresses, and uses the first person seen with the use of “my”. He tells the story of his father and grandfather and how it lead him to respecting his elders but following their footsteps in another way.

Uses a simile in line 2 to express the similarity of how he holds his pen, to the position a gun would take.

This poem does not have a designated form or rhyme scheme so it is classified as open form. He has stanzas that range in length from two to eight lines.