After a week with my arms
around very little--
nothing really to talk about,
after my pet spider quit being a spider,
I had a will to splurge--
moved into the Hotel Splendide.
 

The drinks at the lounge bar
need neither mixer nor chaser;
tipping back and getting the glad-eye.
Conversation too goes down like rain
with faces moving in, personal
in the middle of time off at the Hotel Splendide.
 

Speaking with a person named Randy,
I remembered how ill I'd felt one time
running to meet another Randy,
falling down on my way.
The current Randy is my mate
lately met and smiling at the Hotel Splendide.
 

Another character, call him Joe,
told me about his wife of some 30 years
and how his travels divided him,
sometimes quartered him--but he
never lost his memory,
stopping off at the Hotel Splendide.
 

They say if you stay a week
(and no one dies at the Hotel Splendide
and the topic itself never comes up)
then, chances are, you'll extend the visit
and lose your watchfulness,
your bitterness.
 

But, myself, I scan the daily papers now,
study first the box scores
then the obituaries.
There's the need to know
who's won and lost
off the grounds of Hotel Splendide.