Given To Keep Us Warm Poem by Mark Heathcote

There are blankets given to keep us warm
to calm and conceal our aching bones.

Blankets are given to offload a responsibility
that camouflages a problem with invisibility.

There are blankets given in friendship,
blankets carrying death disease by smallpox.

There are blankets given for protection,
weighted ones that help ease our anxiety.

There are blankets given to new-borns
blankets afforded a cloak of invincibility.

There are blankets given to adoring lovers.
That gives us a sense, a feeling of security.

There's nothing to beat the soft coziness
of a freshly made bed, often it has been said.

But I'd like a blanket wrapped around me
Simply, to ward off the intolerable

-loneliness of feeling "isolated and alone."
Wishing, desiring a lover's arms.