Happy Birthday, Daddy. We Miss You.

                                         January 7, 1915- June 18, 2005

Those Winter Sundays

                        --Robert Hayden                                                

Sundays too my father got up early 

and put on his clothes 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 up 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?