"Those Winter Sundays" ~by Robert Hayden

(#7)
A man is looking back at his childhood, and he is regretting all the times he never thanked his father or acknowledged the kind deeds he had done for him.

Hayden describes the way his father woke up early every Sunday to warm the house for them. He uses description and imagery to describe the way his father would get up in the "blueblack cold" of the night and go start a fire. He describes hearing the "cold splintering, breaking" as the warm fire wood crackled and burned through the cool night air. I think this poem is expressing the regrets he is feeling about the way he treated his father. "Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well." Hayden lists the many ways his father was helpful to him during his childhood and how he had taken for granted everything he did. Hayden is looking back with sadness and regret because he never gave his father the thank you he deserved. He always expected his father to do these things, so he never acknowledged them as important acts of kindness.