Hotel Window
Pia Taavila-Borsheim
A train rumbles in the distance, bearing its load toward southern cities.
As its whistle cries, a fog lifts beyond the river. All night long I watch
at the window, a sentinel of the parking lot, a guardian over rooftops
and cars nosed against the curb. Warehouse streetlights keep company,
their steady rays small comfort in the dark. Someone slides a receipt
under my door, slaps a newspaper down while freightcars roll along,
receding past billboards weathered and torn. These rocking rhythms
lull me to bed. Thick white linens embrace my body’s fatigue.
When morning breaks, I’ll head out as well, walk into frosted air,
my breath laced with ice. I’ll drive along creekbeds and track lines,
past hillsides. I’ll cross the river, take any throughway
to the town where David waits, standing in the driveway.
§
Pia Taavila-Borsheim’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and others, and in anthologies such as Deaf Lit Extravaganza and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She is the author of the poetry collection Moon on the Meadow: Collected Poems 1977 – 2007 (Gallaudet University Press, 2008) and the chapbook Two Winters (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She is a tenured professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, where she teaches literature and creative writing.