Curtis's Blog

I usually have trouble remembering specific lines from previous poems that I have read, but from sophomore year, one poem sticks out in my mind: Digging by Seamus Heaney. In Ms. Seelen’s English class, we memorized and recited this poem and I can still remember much of it. Especially since we are going to read his work later this semester, I think it is apt that I share this poem:

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 flower beds
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 father 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 that.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests
I’ll dig with it.

I was looking for some of my old poems on my computer to put on here, and these are both from 2006. Apparently back then I had something against titles as these are both untitled:

Untitled

Feeding from a cup of death,
Like a poison it spreads, ripping and tearing.
Silent shadows cry out; No one ever hears.
Only downward, this path -
Knowing, but hoping for some return.
Seemingly alone midst the first fall.

The stained ground speaks in a tongue none can decipher.
Armies of dark clouds swarm the skies
Winning the battle against the cowardly Sun.
Why do they run?
Why do they fall?
The futile attempt to escape destiny.

Untitled #2

Apparently, you understood.
Spoken as simple as a crumpled wheel of colors
Changing to a layered, manifold puzzle of questions.
And on occasion, those words I couldn’t answer.

You had me, then, at the slightest movement.
Leaning in the wrong direction, or so I decided,
Flickering lights and a town of lost horrors,
Exposing myself, like legion of hopeless soldiers.
Apparently, you had no idea.

This poem comes from the first that we worked on in class. Eventually after many revisions, it was submitted to be in the next Calliope edition.

Morning

Dewy 7:00 AM rays reflect off
the almost-hidden lid of his left eye.
He pouts while cursing silently
the sun’s awakening.

Three…four
now five times a pale hand
emerges from the sheets,
and flails to silence
his clock’s incessant whine.

The boy’s body lurches
blindly from the bed,
rigid arms held outward,
feeling for the door
in a dead man’s trance.

Eyes still shut, he staggers
down the hallway.
Tips of calloused fingers dance
along the chips and notches in the wall paint,
reading its silent message
like Louis Braille reborn.

He pushes through the door, tugging off
the frayed-to-almost-see-through white shirt.
Flakes of water droplets
defibrillate his weary skin–
the sting of soap, familiar,
in the tiniest cracks of his eyes.