Those Winter Sundays

Happy January. I’ve been absent from this space for several months and, to be honest, I’m not here to make promises of future consistency :) But in an effort to get the ball rolling again, here’s a poem that fits well this time of year. I think about those closing lines year round.

Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?