A Poem by David Yezzi

The Room

The room I stayed in, it was not the best.
Oh, it was clean. Jumped out at me, that smell:
of antiseptic, like an ICU—
the two twin beds, drawn curtains, metal door,
the ochre walls receding at the end
of a dim corridor, vacant and quiet.

A few birds, wintering in bare trees, sang out
in sleepy beeps and squeals their vital signs.

But I was going. That was the good news:
the trip was done.

I leave each room the same:
I make the bed. I wipe the sink, toss out
the half-used lemon-mint conditioner,
pile the wet towels on the bathroom floor.
I think of the housekeeper who arrives
to find a room that barely needs attending.
I try to make their job a little easier,
since, mostly, it is not:
hair and shit and disarray and dirt
and cast-off things and broken things, all left
with no regard for who will clean them up.
I leave five dollars on the desk.
Last look:
the dark and tidy room, the low-pile carpet,
the packs of decaf, huge flatscreen TV.
It isn’t possible to leave things better
than I found them. There are always stains:
a hand towel freckled with a daub of blood
or the remade sheets with their night-fever creases.
I want to get it spotless as I can,
as if my stay left only hidden traces,
almost as if I’d never stayed at all.

David Yezzi’s latest books are Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life (St. Martin’s Press) and More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Measure Press). He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.