You are like a dear friend

whose door never closes.

Your advice is limitless:

Hash browns, fries, baked potato, you always know what to say.

You welcome me into your cool quarters on early April mornings

and worriedly usher me in from the cold when I stand on your doorstep at midnight on Halloween,

an arm around my shoulder and a readied pitcher of coffee in the other

(you don’t mind that I’m still in costume).

You adore my company at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning,

and even though the throng of your Baptist friends stream through your doors like the coffee from the pitcher

and I don’t fit among them, you don’t mind,

because religious conviction isn’t what really matters, is it,

and you know this because you make time for each one: Bob Jones, John Knox,

and join me for a coffee and poached eggs.

And you never forget that I like two creams

and one and a half packs of pure cane sugar, not Sweet n’ Low.

My headlights sweep your drive at anytime and you’re never asleep,

merely there to throw open your door

and hand out free smiles and sincere “how do you do’s”,

exuding the warmth that I’ve come to wrap myself in tighter than I do the quilt at the end of my own bed.