Emanating from deep within its coils is warmth

The red hot comfort like an indoor campfire

 

As it hugs and envelops me until I no longer remember the suffering

Which the cold harshness of the outdoors, unknown to it,

had tried to use to hinder my spirit,

and withhold my sense of self

 

Dormant, as a volcano waiting to erupt with fire

and explode with molten spewage,

A sudden 'click' then an electrical 'bzzzzzz' bring it, and me, to life

 

And now I begin to feel that the cold beer I'm holding, and the boredom I'm feeling,

and the brow I've been furrowing, and the muscles of the body I've been clenching 

 

Are suddenly forgotten

unfrozen

forgiven

and are now fermenting,

Aging into something new, something still unknown, but something safe

 

Using a cage to keep in the good and out the bad, as many of us do,

it survives to warm me for another evening 

 

So, thank you, to this thing that lays in wait during the summer months

But plays an integral role in my lonesome nights during the colder ones

 

And the thing itself should probably give thanks to the broken window that won't shut all the way

 

Because without it, it would never see the light of day, only the closeted shadows of darkness

But the thanks we're owed rarely come to us.