Poetry Sunday: Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

I grew up in a time and place that featured pretty cold winters. It was not unusual for the temperatures to dip into the teens (Fahrenheit) or even lower and stay there for days at a time. Our house had two fireplaces and the kitchen stove that all burned wood. My father would rise before daylight, even on Sundays, and get the fires started in each of them. By the time I got up, the house would be warm. I never thanked him. I never thought anything about it. It was just what he did. He was my father. I do think about it, and him, now and I regret how thoughtless and thankless I was. But what did I know then of love's austere and lonely offices?

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?