Last Guest

The hotel has been closed for a decade,
and soon they will tear it down,
a life’s work mere rubble in less than a day.

You have no memories here, no history.
This moment, as you open the unlocked door
now covered with vines and overgrown forsythia ,
is your first glimpse

of the arched doorways and peeling paint,
of the lobby once elegant and lively,
now layered with trash and dust
and the droppings of mice.

A pigeon sits at the front desk,
his black bead eyes curious at your intrusion,
light streams in the windows behind him,
almost heavenly in its brightness.

You are likely the last guest,
the last soul to see this place as it was,
a coming together place, a wayside in journeys
long finished.

You climb the stairs, not to go, or see,
but simply to feel the walnut bannister under your hands,
and to hear the firmness of the steps, craft built
and still strong, without a squeak.

There is a tear in your eye,
salty and slow,
for people and times and places long lost
to nothing more than an infatuation for the new,
replaced, as you have been,
by something more glittering and bright
with fresh paint – perfect
and utterly without charm.

It will not take long for the newness to fade,
and then perhaps,
we will realize what was lost,
but unfortunately, too late.

You come back down the stairs.
You snap one picture. Only one.
It is enough.
This place is etched in your mind
as surely as your own abandonment.
You do not need a picture to remember
the truth.

About this poem. 

A few years ago, my daughter and I came on a hotel that had been long closed in Manchester, VT. Total suckers for abandoned buildings, we stopped and looked in, just to see. The back door was open and we went in and wandered the empty halls. The place has haunted me ever since.

Despite that backstory, this poem has little to do with hotels, and everything to do with people, and life.

Tom

PS -The hotel was torn now. A shiny new one sits in it’s place.