Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Wednesday Comedy: Belated Father's Day


My Father's Day began with an 80-minute run and then a trip to the doctor for my son, who contracted pink eye. So it goes as a parent.


OK, I'll give some obligatory sentimentality by presenting a favorite poem, Robert Hayden's "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?

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