This Is The Room

This is the room, the desk clerk said
Her key opened the door
This is where they found him dead
He'd fallen to the floor
On our stationary one last poem
Scribbled with a pen
As if in a hurry to get it done
And no rhyme at the end

The desk clerk left the girl in there
To spend some time alone
The curtains dark but drawn aside
To let the sun come in
She could see the shining river
The bridge he walked across
To visit with the memory
Of one he'd loved and lost

A room like any other room
Essentials, nothing more
For working girls without a home
For soldiers from the war
A writer with his pen and pad
The poems he never sold
A man who was a rebel lad
And wouldn't trade for gold

She sat and read his poems a while
The sentence spirit bears
The dust of every lonely mile
The smell of missing years
That chambermaids can't wash away
That bleaches never clean
The silences we leave to say
The things we really mean

Once a week, the clerk had said
He'd take a small bouquet
And cross the bridge to sit with her
And come back looking grey
As if her absence put to sleep
The colours in his skin
As if the curtains closed to keep
The sun from getting in

There was a time before this time
A room before this room
A song that stays inside the dust
And won't cling to the broom
She pulled a bottle from her purse
Drank in the fading light
To a rebel lad who stayed the course
Good night, old man, good night

This is the room, the desk clerk said
The plaque read 304
This is where they found him dead
He'd fallen to the floor
On the stationary one last verse
Scribbled with his pen
Not his best, but not his worst
And no rhyme in the end

She sat and read his poems a while
The sentence spirit bears
The dust of every lonely mile
The smell of missing years
That chambermaids can't wash away
That bleaches never clean
The silences we leave to say
The things we really mean

DL