Wednesday, February 28, 2007

It's snowing in Seattle

I really don't like getting out of bed into the cold air. Almost every morning I have to tell myself, absurdly, "If Robert Hayden's father could do it, you can too!"

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?

1 comment:

Zanni said...

I heart that poem. Tried to call you yesterday but your phone was being weird. Call me tomorrow if you can, ok?