Fr. Spencer+

Thank you.

As I read the poem a memory came of sleeping near a
fire place in an old farmhouse ca. 1943.  The large
civil-war era house had fire places in every room.  In
the bitter winter weather, my father would carry coal
or wood to each bed room to warm them for us.

Instead of falling asleep watching tv, I watched the
blazes dance on pine knots and splintering coal.

Charles+





--- gmspencer@... wrote:

> 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?
>
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