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Robert Hayden’s "Those Winter Sundays" Upon first reading, Robert Hayden’s "Those Winter Sundays" seems to be a poem about a typical day in the life of a boy’s father. It is much more than that, however. The young boy is grown up now and he realizes how many things his father used to do for him without once receiving a "thank you." In "Those Winter Sundays," the persona thanks his father for all the things he has done that have gone unnoticed. The poem is written in free verse. It has no identifiable rhyme scheme or meter. There are three stanzas of five, four, and five lines, respectively. The reader is able to conjure a picture in his or her head with the images presented in the poem. The father is obviously some sort of manual laborer, since he works outdoors in all kind of weather. The fact that the persona fears the "chronic angers of that house" causes the reader to rethink the reason for the boy’s slow rising, which at first seems to be reluctance to leave the warmth of the bed. The persona, however, has another reason for his unwillingness to get out of bed, but the reader is not told what that reason is. Rhythm is created in the placement of certain words and punctuation, causing the reader to read the p