Blog Prompt: Favourite Poem

Blog Prompt: Pick a poem or prose extract that has left a deep impression on you. Write about why it left such a deep impression on you. Write about why it left such a deep impression and what you learnt from it. Include the poem/prose extract in your post.

Poem: Digging by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as 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 could 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, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, 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.

This poem was introduced to me while in Sec 1 and has left a deep impression on me because not only was this poem annotated very thoroughly, it holds the key aspects of life, especially as a child. In this poem, the main theme here is our relationship to our forebears and to work and also the spirit of oneself. When one is growing up, there are many experiences and this poem highlights one of them, to learn the importance of work and show gratitude to our forebears, this is a spirit which is a must-have in every one of us, to remember and to contribute in the future. This is a meaning which contributes to the future of a child after he has grown up. Also, another minor theme in this poem would actually be the fact that there is no predictability in life, which is needed to be known by all people to understand the true meaning of life and.