These Summer Thursdays Where I am Really Busy and End up Doing Copious Amounts of Homework Without Regard for Nourishment of the Mind or Body

Once again, I find myself not entirely hating the poem I read, this time it being Those Winter Sundays by  Robert Hayden.  However, I was slightly troubled in class today when everyone (besides Jodi, towards the end) was taking the poem literally, even going as far as to suggest that the father was abusive!  This bothered me because I saw the main figure in the poem, the father, as a #12 perfect-fit symbol for God.  The first stanza depicts a hard-working and providing man who no one ever thanks; additionally, I took this last line ("No one ever thanked him." [line 5]) to be remorseful, a common lament over one's relationship with God, the Almighty Father.  In the second stanza, the speaker "would slowly rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house," [lines 8-9].  The word choice of 'slowly' here leads me to believe the speaker is simply going through the motions of praising God without truly believing, motivated by the 'fear' of hell and retribution.  This theory is further supported in the final stanza when the speaker "[speaks] indifferently to him,/ who had driven out the cold/ and polished my good shoes as well" [lines 10-12].  These are the thoughts of a man who was indifferent to a God who had removed the bad in life and nurtured only the good.  The poem is closed with a repeated rhetorical question to himself of "What did I know, what did I know" [line 13].  Obviously, the father is symbolic of God, and the speaker is thinking back with regret on how he treated his Father.