Digging

Mind with pen engaged
turns the metaphoric sod
furrow to the waiting page

‘god’, my father, took
his spade just the once,
unlike Heaney senior

and dug a quarter plot
by the book, perfection
then fallow, quite forgot

sickled it once or thrice
till we moved, up, away
where digging wasn’t nice

God, what he missed
the earth, the tilth
the waiting harvest.

10 February 2005

A reflection with apologies to Seamus Heaney

Shortly to be published in 'Poetry Express, details to follow.