Poems often share similar themes or ideas with other poems sometimes involving relationships between people. Forgiving My Father by Lucille Clifton and Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden share the theme of relationships involving parent and child. Although they share the same theme, they share it in different ways. Forgiving my Father shows a negative and later forgiven relationship between a daughter and father, and Those Winter Sundays shows an apparent (or seemingly) positive but  undesirable relationship between son and father.

Forgiving My Father by Lucille Clifton is about a daughter and her relationship with her father. She is reflecting on her relationship with him as he had already passed away. She comes off as angry with her father because of money problems and shows signs of emotional abuse by using the words “old letcher” and “old liar” to describe her father. She felt angry and bitter towards her father because of his money problems. She refers to her father as an “old liar” suggesting she was on her mother’s side because of the emotional pain he caused her as a child. (Clifton, line 10). Later she says, “were each other’s bad bargain, not mine” referring to her mom and dads relationship, that she no longer feels it is her problem. Again, speaking about her father she says, “you were the only son of a needy father”. By saying this, she is reflecting on how her father was raised and begins to think maybe it wasn’t all his fault and that was the way he was. Clifton refers to her father as a ghost “you have stood in my dreams/ like a ghost” (Clifton, lines 3-4) making us assume he is probably already dead. This line foreshadows the end of the poem when she says “side by side in debtor’s boxes” symbolizing the lack of affection in her relationship with her father (Clifton, line 22). Lying “side by side” explains her father is lying in a grave beside her mother and “debtors boxes” suggests her father is in a cheap coffin. Towards the end of the poem, she begins to realize that she can’t hold him accountable for the poor condition and relationship and begins to forgive him because she knows she will not get anywhere in life dwelling over the past. 

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden is about a son and his relationship with his father. The narrator talks about how he would wake up and his father will have already done the messy work around the house. His father would do this everyday, “Sundays too” (Hayden, line 1) He would do things like heating the house and polishing his son’s shoes. The narrator describes his dad as hardworking using words like “cracked hands that ached” (Hayden, line 3) to show his assiduity and dedication. Cracked hands resemble hard work because people who do manual labor are doing a lot of hard labor using their hands a lot causing them to show signs of wear.  Since his dad is such a hard worker and did everything around the house without hesitation, the narrator talks about how he regrets not being more thankful. In the last stanza, he repeatedly asks “what did I know” (Hayden, 13), meaning he was too young to understand all his father did for him and took his father for granted. Now looking back, he feels bad that he didn’t thank his dad for more after all he had done. 

In Those Winter Sundays and Forgiving My Father both Clifton and Hayden are reflecting on past relationships with their parents because they are now grown. Both writers talk about current relationships with parents now that it is too late because the parents have already passed. In Those Winter Sundays, there is a feeling of regret from the author for not being more thankful for all his father did. However, in Forgiving My Father, Clifton focuses on a negative relationship with the father that is eventually just forgiven because she is tired of holding a useless grudge. These two poems’ main theme focuses on relationships with parents and regrets of how they were handled later on in the author’s lives. These poems show us that it is important to cherish relationships with our parents and not take them for granted or hold stupid grudges because they will not be around forever so we need to enjoy the relationships while we have them. 
