Mother's China

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden, 1962

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?

Mother’s China
River Dayes

From her birth on she was always joyful
and prone to much curiosity,
she explored all her world
with wide eyes seeking unknown obstacles
for amusement. Nobody stopped her.

She would throw her tea parties with her stuffed bear.
She broke Mother’s china
every now and again, but laugh,
“I clumsy I am, I broke the tea cups,”

She’d shrug it off and run out to play
with the bear who drank her tea
out of Mother’s special china.
What joy she had, what joy she had,
What ignorance led me to ignore her?