The cool night seeps in through the window,
and just before dawn, the soft music of a sad ballad
drifts into my gradually returning consciousness,
in a moment of gentle beauty
before the city returns to day,
the hotel with running showers and flushing toilets and clanking dishes,
the street with can brakes and car horns
and tienda grills sliding up,
and though I admit the room was stuffy in the afternoon,
I would have missed so much
in a room with sealed windows
and air-conditioning–
I would have missed the music.
Copyright 2016
T. Allen Culpepper