The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King once addressed in his speech that “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” Love emerges in our lives in different forms and alters our minds in various patterns. People consistently ignore the most evident type, while at the same time, the most frequently appeared one–familial love. The poets Robert Hayden and David Bottoms display this theme in their works and encourage people to rebuild connections with their loved ones. More specifically, Hayden and Bottoms examine how love looks different depending on the source in the poems “Those Winter Sundays” and “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt.” 

In “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden employs numerous daily details with imagery to highlight the implied love of a father towards the son. The depiction of the father waking up early “Sunday too” while working “in the blueblack cold” features the daily routine of one man getting up before sunrise(Haydens 1, 2), and the alliteration of “blueblack” accentuates the freezing gust he encounters. The “cracked hands that ached/ from labor” and the adoption of caesura in “banked fires [blazing]” from the heart further emphasize the pain that the father suffers from arduous physical labor and his containment of rage (Haydens 3, 5). However, laboring so much to support the family, the father receives no appreciation from anyone. There are internal fires “burning” inside the family and the depression that accompanies him, but his son repeatedly mollifies him. Perceiving the cold “splintering” and “breaking” outside the house and the “[warmth]” inside the rooms, the narrator “[rises] and [dresses]” (Haydens 6, 7, 8). The contrast of temperature hints at the significance of the father’s love–Without his assistance, the narrator would never live an ideal life like this. The “[polishment] of [the speaker’s] good shoes” demonstrates another aspect of his father’s care, even in his son's most overlooked items. On the other hand, the speaker looks at him “indifferently” and fears the father for his “austere love”(Hayden 10, 15). Although the father does not receive the appraisal he should acquire, he justifies his love with actions more than words. 

Similarly, in “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt,” David Bottoms demonstrates the magnanimous love of a baseball player’s father. During the narrator’s childhood, he and his father practice baseball “on the rough diamond” and “the hand-cut field”(Bottoms 1, 2). As the imagery presented above suggests, the unsmoothed ground and hilly landscapes do not offer the best training conditions for a player. However, the father’s eagerness to teach and guide his son indicates the investment in his growth and development. As the narrator grows up and progresses through “three leagues of organized ball,” the father keeps reminding him of “the same technique” and the “tiresome pitch about basics”(Bottoms 12, 15, 17, 18). The use of diction and imagery represents the father's consistent commitment to helping his son thrive, even if he may not fully appreciate it. Most importantly, with the symbolism of the baseball, the father stands with the son and supports him with love in every phrase of the narrator’s life. 

Both poems use imagery and diction to highlight the significance of the loving nature in father-son relationships. The father in “Those Winter Sundays” gets up early and toils diligently simply to “[drive] out the cold” and initiate a cozy environment for the son (Hayden 11). Correspondingly, the father in “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt” maintains the baseball preaching on his son “like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap”(Bottoms 12). The readers could infer the excessive consideration towards the kids from the flow of each word. The depictions of the two fathers reveal the same unconditional love offered by family members, asking for no future returns from the kids.

Nevertheless, the identical universal familial bonds have variations in their real-life applications and, thus, their ways of representation. Sometimes, the transfer of love involves no direct interaction between the father and the son—No words, no hugs, but the heat of the burning fires and the polished shoes send more powerful messages than anything. Whereas the father and the son engage together in other instances, they work, train, and thrive from childhood to adulthood, opening hearts for each other. Even though disputes and irritations may arise due to misunderstandings between two generations of people, the realization of the austere love by the kid always brings the correlation between two men closer. Humans cannot explore and analyze all the ways to express love, but perceptions of parental sacrifices and devotion are necessary steps for us to evolve into more developed people.