The Magic of Digging

The soil is dark and damp from rain,
the spade lifts it easily, over again—
it’s prestidigitation!

Hey presto, a robin spots a worm,
watches as it wriggles and squirms
on the soil-encrusted blade

and then swoops in to gobble it down—
that’s prestidigitation!

Kim M. Russell, 20th April 2026

Image by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

It’s Monday and, at the dVerse Poets Pub, time for the quadrille, this week with Punam, who tells us that she is digging and planting in a very hot April, which brought her to the word to include in our quadrilles: ‘dig’.

Punam has dug out some poems about digging and shared excerpts from them: ‘Digging’ by Donald Hall, ‘Grave Digging’ by Rodney Jones, ‘Dig’ by Placebo Recovery, ‘To Dig, Fertilize, Plow and Water’ by Gershon Wolf and one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets, ‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney.

Punam asks us to flex our fingers, rotate our wrists and dig out 44-word quadrilles from our creative minds.

27 thoughts on “The Magic of Digging”

    1. Thankyou, Jennifer. I remember learning the word ‘prestidigitateur’ in French – now that really is a mouthful, especially when trying to pronounce it with a French accent!

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