Father's Day Message

Rudderow series where my father was a signalman in the Sea of Japan in 1945.   The kamikaze attacks upon ships left him scarred for life, decades later, he still awoke from nightmares. 

This is one of my favorite poems as it showed me how terribly insensitive and ungrateful I was as a 17 year old.  I have been indebted to this poem for many years of meditation, thought, repentance, prayer, and later instruction to my own children. 


I wish my father and mother were alive today.  I would tell them how much I loved them, and then ask them questions...so many questions to life that puzzle me. 

Those who are fortunate enough to have their parents with them today, particularly fathers on this Father's Day, are given the privilege of assessing the many sacrifices made by father, acknowledging them, and expressing deep, heart felt gratitude.  

Peter 

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?