My Father Calls Me - Son

Went to the funeral of my friends father. Thought of my own. Wish he stopped smoking. He said he will when I become a mother. Maybe I will do it. For him.


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?

P.S. I never noticed he did that until one friend asked: "Don't you think it's strange he calls you 'son'?"