There’s nothing like a frosty winter morning,
when the sky has had enough
of trying to look nice and welcoming
for you today,
but instead decided to take the day off
and retreat under the soft grey fluff of a blanket, and you too,
have done the same, in a show of comraderie,
cracking the window open just enough
to feel each other’s breath
across the zipping air
that won’t stop fussing
or biting off the skin on your right thumb.

There’s nothing like such a morning
when a bottomless pit of steaming hot coffee isn’t enough, though your heart-rate
is through the roof, but you pretend that’s good
for you, as if it’s pumping blood and heating up
your insides.

A morning when the requirement to stay inside
is no longer a discomfort but an opportunity –
for some calm piano tunes,
just like the wind
converging then diverging,  
to serenade you in the background, while your rough
cold hands, stretch out in their familiar spider web
but this time in a slower
motion stretch
and take you to the keyboard once again,
because there’s nothing like it on a frosty, freezing, gloomy winter  
Morning like this.