Lucille Clifton uses the words “paying” and “bills” within the first two lines.  Both of the words are both positioned by the word “Friday” which is a time element, by doing this Clifton is already showing us the relationship between time and money. Because fathers are excepted to provide the main source of income for the families, many fathers leave families all the time because of the stress of always having to be there for the family and having to provide a majority of the income for the family.  In Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” the daughter is talking bad about the father.  This is shown through the remarks and name calling she does toward the father like “old” and “lecher”. The main point of the piece is too show that it is actually the girl is mad at father, and the father is working as hard as he can to try and provide for her with his time and his income, but she will never respect him.    

 In the first stanza it becomes evident that the girl only wants the see the father when he brings them money or time.  The metaphor that is being used is money being the equivalent of time.  The girl does not actually like the father she just wants his money, but when he doesn’t bring their money she is angry and upset with her father. This is shown through her insult that follows or precedes any mention of money or time “payday payday old man” (Clifton 5). Here we see brings up the fact that it is payday which leads to her insulting him.        

In lines three and four the words “all week” and “asking” appear.  We read the father standing in the girl’s dream asking for more time. The father wants to spend more time with his daughter like every father does.  This girl does not want to see her father whatsoever, so she uses him for his money and that is all she wants to do with him.  The father is seen “asking” (4) for more time in her dreams to illustrate the frustration that he is feeling with his daughter.  He has a daughter who wants his money and he gives it to her, excepting time with her in exchange, but is getting none. There is clear evidence of giving her money in the quote “and i hold it out like a good daughter” (7). This can be seen as her just standing there waiting for money and her never getting any, but she is receiving money because she then precedes to “stop talking.”  By not talking we know she is content with the money because what do all kids do when they get what they want? They stop talking and go “play with their new money or toy” All is he getting is hate and empty pockets from his daughter. In comparison, the girl gets money from her loving father and continues to hate him. In reality she is using him for his money and gives him no respect at all.

We see the mother’s early death illustrated by “mothers… opens in her early grave” (6).  The daughter is now using the caring father for his money.  We also the use of verbal abuse toward the man, through the words “old man” (5) this causing the reader to think negatively of the father because we see that she thinks lowly of him.  But this girl is the one who needs to be thought of negatively because of the “bullying” she does by forcing her father to give her money.  She does not even consider his feelings when she says “old liar” (9).  When the daughter speaks about her mother we see she talks about her mother’s hand opening.  The father is now forced to give the dead mother money as well that the daughter, which she will use and waste on herself.  The hand opening symbolizes the daughter opening her hand for her money and her mother’s dead hand for her father’s money.  

The second stanza begins with time, and the girl talking about how there is no more time for her father, blatantly stating that she has no more time, and then calls him a “lecher” and “old liar” (8-9).  The daughter calls him a lecher for one main reason, she listened to her dead mother call him one repeatedly.  She then calls him rich, but since the money in this poem actually alludes to time we know that he was not rich in time because he was busy. He was always working which is seen for his “needy son” (13).  Since he had a needy son we see know that his son needed or wanted a lot.  The line before that, says the father came from a “needy family” (12).  We know that he worked hard because he grew up poor and with no money and then went onto support a family with needy children therefore forcing him to make a decent amount of money.  

After that we see the daughter talk about a “pocket” (17) and coming up “empty any friday” (18) the pocket in this case is his watch.  This is referring to the lack of time that he spent with family because he was always working.  The daughter is complaining again that the father never spent time with the family, which she describes time as money again.  She talks about the pocket and how it was “going to open” (17) by saying this the daughter telling us that the father canceled plans.  We know he didn’t cancel the plans by the previous stanza which is see as him working again, he didn’t except to be so busy but he had to work extra to pay for a “needy son” and was already poor to start with.  She then begins to call the father a slew of names to insult him.  All of them having to do with lack of time that he has.  She calls him an “old dead man” (20) to talk about the amount of time he has spent with her.  Old people generally do not get to spend a lot of time with their loved ones because they are about to pass away at any second.  The father cannot spend that much time with the girl because he is constantly working which the girl does not understand so she calls him an old man because he never spends anytime with them.  The end of the poem we get the image of the father lying in his grave.  She says he lies next to his debtors’ which are his coworkers and the people that he works with.  He is laid next to the debtors’ because they are who he worked with and wanted to be buried next to. This is inferred because people always want to be buried to the people they are close with. He was closest with the people he worked with, because that is where he spent most of time.  The poem then ends talking about an accountant opening up his grave.  The daughter got older in life and realized that he was a busy person and was always working and could never give them enough time because he was trying to provide for them.  She wants someone (accountant) to open up her father’s grave for her so that she can apologize to him and say her sorry for being so cruel to him.

Many times in life money and time are used in the same sentence, for example “I worked to long for such little money” In “forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton the words money and time appear close to each other very often.  The father in the poem is very short on time because he is working man trying to provide for his family.  The money that the daughter refers to is actually the fathers time that he spends at work and not with her.  The father is doing the right thing by using his time to provide for his family, but the daughter only sees it as him not having enough time for her.  
