We are Family?

("Those Winter Sundays", Hayden)

This entire poem seems to be trying to win sympathy for the father. The first stanza reflects his "cracked hands" laboring in the "blueblack cold". It is clearly evident that the father works tirelessly to provide for his family, giving them warmth and "good polished shoes", and the work bluntly states that the fellow never receives thanks. The speaker seems to be reflecting on the necessary pity for his father, and the grief he should feel for not being grateful for his father. However, the speaker does not reveal that he has or ever will share his thanks. While his father provided some basics for him, the tone of the poem reveals that the father didn't provide a loving relationship. The poem describes the past sour relationship with its "chronic anger" and "speaking indifferently" that ruined the speaker's image of family and love. The speaker should be receiving the sympathy, not the father. The speaker's past was ruined by his father and home life and now he lives a life in "lonely offices" not knowing of the work required to love.