Digging
This past summer I visited Ireland. It’s a place I’ve been to many times over the course of my life. My parents were both born there and lived there until they were in their late 20s. My two older sisters were born in Ireland, too. Nearly every summer when I was growing up we would go to Ireland so I could get to know my grandmothers, play with my cousins (more than 50 first cousins), and spend time with my aunts and uncles (20 in total).
On this particular trip in July, I found myself in a taxi on the way to the airport with a rather chatty cab driver named Liam. Now, it’s never a surprise to come across a chatty Irishman. It’s an extremely friendly country. They have a deep sense of pride in Ireland and especially love talking to visitors.
Near the end of the cab ride, he asked me what I do for work. I told him I was a teacher, and he lit up. He was so excited. He asked what I taught, and I told him sixth grade English.
Then he asked, “Do you read any poetry with them?”
I thought for a moment and said, “A little bit. Not as much as I’d like to though.”
“Digging,” he said. “Have you ever read the poem ‘Digging?’”
The title sounded familiar, but I told him I hadn’t because I was nervous he might start asking me questions about the poem.
“Ah, you should look it up. It’s by Seamus Heaney. My son absolutely loves it. You should read it with your class, and ask them what they’re going to dig with.”
I told him I would find the poem, and he continued on telling me about it. When we arrived at the airport, he unloaded the bags and reminded me again about the poem, “Be sure to ask them what they’re going to dig with.”
While waiting in line to check my bags I found “Digging” by Seamus Heaney on my phone and read it three or four times. Liam was right; it’s a beautiful poem about a man whose father and grandfather used a spade to dig potatoes and turf. It was what they were good at; it’s also what they had to do to provide for their families. However, the pen is what the son (Seamus Heaney) decides he is going to dig with, because he can’t handle a spade like his old man.
In that moment in line at the airport I decided I wanted to not only share it with my Language Arts class, but with all of you. So I leave you with a poem and a question:
What are you going to dig with this year?
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 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.
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Sean Melia speaking to students in the Trustey Family Theatre
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Heaney with a sculpture representing the poem in the County Londonderry village of Bellaghy, where he was born. Heaney died in 2013.
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Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.
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First grader Alex Capuano with a worm found in the new outdoor classroom
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