Those Winter Sundays

I came across this poem called Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden while going through a poem anthology. I thought it was beautiful, and hope you will find it so, too.

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?

It reminds us of how much love our parents, or our loved ones in general, do so much for us without us ever knowing it.

They live in this world, do small, loving things for us, and leave this world.