Fathers Day Inspiration and Creativity

I decided to write an entry for Fathers Day because I was moved by Seamus Heaney reading on radio 4 this morning. I went hunting and found a poem by Heaney that speaks to me about what we do relative to what our fathers (and of course mothers and other influential people) do/did. Heaney's personal experience of his father digging while he writes touches on a universal. We are different from our fathers but something continues.

I chose this photo of laburnums in the Laburnum Arch at Bodnant Garden because my father took me to see horticultural gardens and I click away at the same kinds of images he would have loved to share. he had a roliflex camera, a darkroom and an enlarger. I have a digital camera and a computer, and you can click on the photo to enlarge. This is my first Fathers Day since he died age 95.

Here's Heaney's poem. Our work and expression are in a different world from our parents, but what are we  continuing from and what is the same about us and our creativity?

Digging

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. Seamus Heaney