SUNDAY MORNING

From J:
Fire going in the woodstove, cleaning up a bit downstairs, listening to 72' Part 2.
Perfect Sunday morning.

Thanks for that.


So shortly after I received that, I sat down in the Queen Anne chair because Cooder wanted some petting. At the top of the books piled on the floor was, at random, a  poetry anthology. This was the first poem in the book.


Those Winter Sundays

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.

— Robert Hayden

Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems, Liveright, 1975