The Lotus Hotel

            Saturday was my first almost normal morning of playing guitar in a week. My thumb only felt a little tender a ways into practice.

            I finished my poem, “May Basket” using the focused stream of consciousness technique of freefall:

Growing up in rural New Brunswick was like being exiled from my dreams in a low security prison for which the warden was boredom. But within its walls made of distance, age and frozen progress, no one followed me around and I had the sweet freedom of benevolent neglect. Looking back on how I was allowed to wander by myself when very young into the cedar forest seems like I once had the ability to fly. I caught bright, beautiful sunfish in the little quicksand lake behind my friend’s house. I lay on my back on a truckload of hay while watching meteorites fall. I saw the northern lights shimmering icy pink and humming like a transformer in the sky. I remember the snow: how deep the powder was when its crust broke beneath my feet. It delighted me when fresh, but I was impatient for its death every spring. How culturally starved our little low-hilled, wooded humdrum pocket of nowhere seemed. But there were little traditions that shone through, like the now forgotten ritual in May of mothers making bright coloured baskets out of tissue for boys and girls to hang on the doorways of other boys and girls which signaled one to come out and chase the other for a kiss. 

            For the first time in about three years I remembered to shut my lights off for Earth Day. I lit candles in all my rooms and it was nice and not hard to live with for an hour. When I looked out my window though I saw that a lot of people had their lights on.

            I started working on a longer piece inspired by Susan Musgrave, called “Lotus Hotel”, and telling a story of something that happened in Vancouver in the late 70s, and I think it’s done for now:

I know that I didn’t personally break her

neck, but sometimes I wonder if I should

have let her in that night

because it might have saved her

from an unfortunate fate.

She had the room next to mine in the Lotus

Hotel, where we had a view

of the back airshaft

and of all of the other lucky windows

that looked out upon the rear

of the building, and down to the concrete

bottom, which showed the viewer

all of the things that were thrown or had fallen

out and down from all of the floors

like the top one where we lived

on different sides of one corner

of the lightwell, and divided

by the men’s washroom, which had a window

on my edge, so when I looked

outside, the closest thing I saw was her porthole,

which was always open,

even on cold days. But I had not seen her yet

and didn’t know that my neighbour was a woman

till once when I was reading

by my open window and I heard her

laughing next door. I glanced

across and noticed that someone was throwing

a party and I caught her

face and saw that she was the loudest

of them all, but then I ignored that and returned

to my book. Suddenly though a beer stubby flew

in through my window. I picked it up and heaved

it back in theirs and resettled

in my pages, only to have

the bottle bonk me

on the noggin this time. I shouted out

“You hit me in the head!” She looked out

at me and then went away. Everything was quiet

until abruptly there was a knock

on my door and it was her coming to apologize

to me for being so deathly

rude as to toss her empty

into my fenestra so as to strike me full

against my skull. She asked if she could come in

to my chamber and I

said yes. She sat down on my bed

and then we started to shoot

the breeze about my life and hers. When she got

more comfortable she stretched

out and looked at me

in a very friendly way as she told me

that she’d inherited

her own boat and that I was invited

to come out and sail with her

sometime. She was Haida and I did find her

attractive, though she was twenty

years older than me. We talked

for a while and then she went back

to drink some more.

I was in bed

when she knocked on my door again the next

night and asked if she could come

in. But I had to work in the morning and told her

I needed to get

some rest, so she went away.

I was pulled from sleep

an hour or so later by the sound of cops

in the hall. I went out

and learned that my new friend had locked her

key in her room and gone

into the men’s washroom to try to climb out

of the window in order to get in

but she’d been drinking and so she fell

head first to the bottom of the lightwell and broke

her neck when she hit the concrete.

I never saw her again but I wonder

if something could have happened between

us if I’d let her into my room that night instead

of turning in bed away from her,

falling asleep while facing the window that she reached

for drunkenly but failed to grab

and then tumbled to death.