Woolgathering

This is one of my favorite poems. I don’t remember when I first read it, I just know it was a long time ago… maybe high school or college? I can’t even find the book I originally had it in. It must have been lost in the many moves I’ve made over the years, which is too bad since it would have provided a clue as to when I originally read it.

It’s a poem that has stayed with me, however, over the years. I still think about it from time to time, especially when the weather turns cold. And now, thanks to Google, I can read it whenever I want. I love the descriptions like “blueblack cold” … spare, unsentimental language.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback 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?

Robert Hayden
August 4, 1913 – February 25, 1980