Parents in Digging and Those Winter Sunday

            In the poems "Digging," by Seamus Heaney and "Those Winter Sundays," by Robert Hayden, both write about their father in reflective poems about childhood. Children don't notice a parents commitment required to keep their families fed, happy and safe. Heaney and Hayden narrate the poem, using nostalgia to paint the overall picture in the readers head. Both poems are going through memories of their fathers admiration and dedication to the family. The poets each have a different tone to their stories, one a pleasant memory as other more heavy hearted.
             There are similarities in these poems; they are both about paternal love. Both poems are in view of the son looking back to when he is a child. They are about young men in awe of their fathers dedication to family and his responsibility to provide for them. Robert Hayden writes about when he was a young boy watching his father go to work every day.  As he looks back through his memories of his father. Hayden realizes how much his dad really did for the family, "then with cracked hands that ached from labour in the weekday weather made, banked fired blaze. No one ever thanked him." Through  the poem, the speaker watches his father get ready for work and dealing with the daily toils weekday made, and how it effected his physical being as well as his mental well-being.
             When Seamus Heaney also writes about his father, in the poem "Digging," he speaks about his fathers work. He tells the story of how his father worked each day just like his grandfather did, "To scatter the new potatoes that we picked,  loving their cool hardness in our hand, By god, the old man could handle a spade, Just like his old man." Heaney watches out the window as his father digs up the flowerbeds, reminding the speaker of when he used to help his father on the farm. He talks about his father always hard at work, " over his shoulder, going down and down.