“Those Winter Sundays” is a poem written by Robert Hayden that begins with the speaker reflecting on the father’s routine:
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
The speaker clearly displays in his eyes that the father has never been treated correctly for the work he has completed. It appears that the father is a firefighter as well as the speaker. The speaker never realized how much the father did for them as an individual.
“A Portrait” a poem by Stanley Kunitz the speaker talks about the guilt that the mother has against the father for making a decision that goes against what she felt.
She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping.
The mother hides the father from the speaker but even as a child the speaker still felt the fathers presence. The life the speaker has lived without the presence and knowledge of the father, knowing that the mother knew still has an impact on the speaker.