In retrospect it was romantic to be the lonely American recovering from 
        pneumonia, living in a hotel room with a typewriter
        and a sink in a Left Bank hotel in a gray Paris winter.

Just as God is not my sorrow,
neither does this prow
above our gable where a love

Which we will never stop reading
Which is inked in no-color and dust

And where begins our not-quite-romance? An ill summer
passed without the hummed comfort of air-conditioning.
Heat scumbled into the corners of Cambridge: ivory our suburb

I name you Miranda for the wonder
of striped wings, nighthawks that until today
I had not seen hunting since the first year

The beautiful and true
spreading of blood in water,
strands of it waving, surreally outward, 

Little caskets of my former dreams,
I feed you back into the Ganges
of living perceptions, extravagant

We walked down the path to breakfast.
The morning swung open like an iron gate.

While sitting prostrate before the ivory feet of the great Buddha, I spilled almost an entire can of Diet Coke on the floor. I quickly tried to mop up the mess with my long hair. 

At the Hotel Oblivion, Airport Drive
  Mezzanine, Conference Center B