If I had to pick just one, it would be
Digging, by Seamus Heaney.
It's beautifully written, of course, and the lovely contrast of "men of the land" versus "a man of letters" provides the tension. The piece lauds the strength of the turf cutter by painting pastoral/romantic images of the men digging peat and potatoes - I can smell a peat fire as I read it.
The narrator is starting a new branch on the family tree - he's a man of letters, not a man of the earth. His lament, "But I've no spade to follow men like them" avows a yearning for paternal approval. He resolutely vows to use his tool - the pen - to keep their memory, their pastoral beauty, their workman's pride alive, and indeed immortalized on the written page.
Other favorites:
Beale Street
The dream is vague
And all confused
By dice and women
And jazz and booze.
The dream is vague
Without a name
Yet warm and wavering
And soft as a flame
The loss
Of the dream
Leaves nothing
The same
-- Langston Hughes
This one is so simply written yet so complex. We are bombarded by distractions as we pursue our dreams. Dice, women, jazz, booze, America's Top Model, Dancing With the Stars, baseball, football, poker.... so many diversions intended to entertain can obviate our dreams. Feeling good can eventually be good enough. We lose some of our humanity when we lose our dreams or sacrifice them for the immediate payoff.
Another Hughes piece that I love is in direct contrast to Beale Street:
Advice:
Folks I'm tellin' you:
Birthing is hard
And dying is mean
So you better get yourself
A little loving
In between.