Digging

Digging

1.  
   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.