Warm Hands, Cold Heart

[butterflydreaming]

Even if my heart is a cold-walled manor
Whose windowed rooms let in the perennial chill
As easily as the warm light of summer,
Even when in the gardens, the birds are still
and rigid statues among the bare-limbed trees,
as bereft of song as the frost-killed flowers
are empty of the tune of bees,
Even though the clocks have lost the hours
Unwound, neglected like all the machines inside,
behind the chained and padlocked great door,
Even while in twisting corridors, hope wanders without guide
My fire burns steadily at its core
Because within this place is the hearth you tend
With light to keep me warm, my watchful friend.