Commended: Tabitha Giddings, In the Warm

Tabitha Giddings

Commended - 2025 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Roots'

In the Warm

After ‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney

Daughter disrupts dinner with talk of poetry.

She is met with glazed eyes and a silly grin.

“Your old dad just doesn’t get it. At school

We read one called Digging? Dreadful stuff.

Killed me.” Ha - Death of a Schoolboy.

After the plates are cleared, and at my insistence,

We settle down to read it together. Must look funny:

Me, deifying Seamus Heaney in the kitchen.

You, with your aching legs.

“So, let’s look at the first couplet.” “First what?”

My tongue aches for quickness. We sit

For a long time before suddenly: “Son writes, dad digs.”

“Yes!” and I mean it. “But look - the son wants to dig like his dad.”

His brow furrows. “Well, that’s stupid. He should keep writing

In the warm. I’m sure his dad’s thinking,

Thank God. Thank God my boy’s in the warm.”

(So there I was, thinking about an attic room,

How lonely it can be with only words for company.

Somehow I never paused to think of you,

Freezing your balls off in some warehouse,

PAR Cans conducting the cold right into your veins,

Keeping that attic room in the forefront of your mind

Like a promise, like a secret, like a daughter.)

“Where did you get warm from in the poem?” I ask.

“I told you. Your old dad doesn’t get poetry.”

Kisses my forehead. “But thanks for explaining it anyway.”

He retires, gratefully, to every other evening of his life.

I disrupt dinner with talk of poetry.

Still met with glazed eyes and a silly grin.

They say, thank God. My girl’s in the warm.