Once Upon a Business Trip, In Faraway West Virginia

i.

There was a man who couldn’t sleep.
So he watched a documentary
on water. So he looked out at the freeway,
and imagined he was a car.

ii.

And he studied the light. He was in luck,
for he was awash in its glow.
He tanned on the balcony’s
midnight. He addressed the world in his

 

underwear. He stood there, hanging
his thoughts out to dry in the wattage of the all-
night sun.

iii.

There was a hotel
across the street, there was the street,
there was a sea of light
and a night stop swimming in it.

 

So that’s where he’d eaten,

iv.

the waitress who served him then
now resting somewhere
in the great state of West Virginia.

v.

He sat by the television’s stream.
It made him think of the hotel
lobby, of the swans swimming
there, each in a cubical

 

pool, floating around in the pale
white boats of their bodies.

 

He imagined them turning in circles
awhile, their orange rudder feet

 

twitching this way
and that, paddles in the pool’s marble harmony.

 

He, too, wanted to paddle
around in his sleep,

 

to know the pale white coast of such
company. He wanted

 

to swim across the street,
and for another room

vi.

to be waiting on the other side.

 

He turned off the tv, and standing
there in its momentary

 

mirror, what he saw was formless
and empty. He hung his only face

 

over the surface of its depth. He hovered
over those waters.