The radiator ticks like it has news
and keeps it. Frost has written on the pane
in a hand I almost read. I choose
the blanket over reason, once again.
You'd say: get up, the day is not a debt.
I'd say: the day can wait, it always has.
Outside, a dog reports what it has met.
Inside, the kettle rises to its gas.
There is a kind of love that stays in bed
and calls it thrift. There is a kind that goes
to work in the dark. We were both, instead,
of neither, which is how the ending shows:
the tick, the frost, the dog, the kettle's steam —
and you, a warmth I reach for in a dream.
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