I went out with Audrey yesterday and with her help delivered the rest of my January magazines bar one. What was lovely is that we found people in and got a warm welcome. I also found a good home for the spare doggie treats from Peanut's last visit, at the letterbox lady's house.
Penny brought me "Poem for the Day" Vol.One, and I am really enjoying it. Another great addition to my poetry library, containing old favourites and new.
I was browsing through it again last night while we were watching something called 'Flood', about London and the highest tide ever and the Thames Barrier not holding it back. It was a very obliging flood, in that it stopped every few minutes or so to give each character a chance to work through their 'issue' and express a lot of angst. And nobody could open a door or do anything without what seemed like hours and hours of pulling and pushing and straining and angsting. The people of Brisbane are going through the real thing at the moment - terrifying flooding there - and they are probably doing so with minimum dramatics.
So I had loads of time to read my poems - and found this - from a poet new to me.
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?
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