Poetry Friday: Seamus Heaney and Father's Day

A poem in honor of Father's Day, Seamus Heaney's Digging, which reminds me a bit of Atticus and his father --



two men who are very different, whose lives have taken very different paths, but who remain connected and grounded in their shared history.


Digging

by Seamus Heaney

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 deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.


Read the whole poem here, at the Poetry Foundation.


The Poetry Friday round-up is at Carol's Corner.