In "Digging," Seamus Heaney draws a parallel between the manual labor of his forebears--his father and grandfather before him--and his own work as a poet. He is proud of his family, even if they were mere subsistence farmers, and admits he doesn't have what it takes to eke out a living like they did ("I've no spade to follow men like him"). He sees what he does, however, as another form of "digging," complete with similar dangers and tribulations to potato farming.
As a writer, he must dig for material, just as his fathers dug for potatoes. This is hard work--it's just another form of hard work, mental instead of physical. Just as his father digs "stooping in rhythm," he writes with rhythm. His father must work through gravel and go "down and down / For the good turf," so must his son the writer: a writer doesn't just tell stories; he finds and exposes the meaning of those stories. That is, he digs until he finds "the good turf."
He also realizes that he might have to hurt the living to do his job right. His father must cut through living roots sometimes, and the son will sometimes hurt those he loves in his own work.
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