what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? 9

It’s day 3 of mandatory horse making. None of them have ended up being the horse I thought I would, or intended to make when I woke up. Today’s horse “Sunday” was going to be sort of a collage but ended up with a poem by Robert Hayden I saw on the subway the other day.

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?

Robert Hayden (1913Ð1980)

What I’d like to do with the rest of today is finish a painting of the big yellow sprinkler at the water park by the west side highway where my friend Judah plays (present for his mom) and finish the paper mache ships I’ve been working on forever (I’m so close).
What I’m going to do is make drawings for $’s for a Jimmy Dean Sausage commercial and get my hair dyed brown as I’ve done every month since I was 25.