This poem reminds me of bitterness we show to those who help us. We hate school because we hate being pushed to be all that we can be. We hate listening to our parents because they make limits and boundaries. But ultimately, these people work so hard for us and want us to be as happy as can be. We take them for granted just like the narrator of the poem did to his father. He is bothered by his father's work ethic and is always so annoyed with him. How true is the fact that we never appreciate what we have until it is gone! We are bitter and arrogant until life strips us of our desires. Only then do we humble ourselves and become more tuned in with who we are supposed to be. Once there's something missing though, we become more bitter about what was lost than we were before.
What I'm trying to say is, Hayden says, "my father got up early.... and worked with cracked hands that ached from labor.... no one ever thanked him." He starts out the poem by just simply stating the facts. He's not bitter, but this is how his life was. We, as a society, are so selfish. We are only concerned with ourselves and hardly ever acknowledge the work of others. The questioning at the end of the poem is almost like an invocation to the heavens. He's so concerned that he was not true to his father. He wishes he would have changed. The ending simply shifts the focus to about his father's work ethic to be about how the narrator misses him and wishes he would have lived differently. This change of focus changes the tone. At first, I thought the poem was about bitterness. In a way, it is. But after reading it and rereading it, I realized that the poem is really about change and being grateful for what we have in life.
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