It is Sunday morning
in Cleveland, Ohio.
We stand naked
on the 15th floor
in the $50.00 room
behind the gold
one-way window.
The sun streaks off
the steel highrise.
Outside, the glare
off Lake Erie makes us blink.
Last night we celebrated
his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary.
They paid for this.
Two small boats sail
in the calm,
white and blue
in the December harbor,
with whitewater trails
like the clouds
in the Sunday skiing sky.
Across is Cleveland Stadium.
The Browns play
at Pittsburgh today.
The stadium lots lay
empty as our stomachs.
We phone room service
as if we do this all the time
for juice, a roll, and coffee.
On TV a talk show
in between Oral
Roberts and the black
gospel choir they say
200,000 people starve
this Christmas.
11 food centers
funded by goodwilled
rich people and other
Christians and Jews
feed them.
We watch
an occasional car
bug-crawl far below
the tinsel garlands
shine, sway in the sun.
On the boulevard Santa Claus
heads stuck like pigs
on lampposts smile.
The landscape patterns
of the hotel yard curve,
precise, locked-in circles
of shrubbery perfect
from this loft
of safe bare-nakedness.
We step back from the glass
leave open drapes to catch the sun,
switch channels,
roll over, yawning,
cuddling and curling
on clean white sheets.
© Jane Piirto. All Rights Reserved.