Hotel du Louvre
1
A fifth-floor garret suite
with a jagged rooftop
skyline just across
the street.
2
Monet, Renoir, Manet,
Gauguin, Van Gogh,
plus many others we didn’t know:
late afternoon at the Musée d’Orsay.
3
Tramping along—across—the Seine,
cutting through
the Louvre,
getting our American confidence back again.
4
Beef tartare on a balcony
of the Louvre. Mist-machines along that nice
fake beach, the Paris
Plages. The Eiffel Tower a spaceship at night.
5
Those rooftops across the way rainy gray. Sky
just slightly bluer. Too much wine last night.
Outside the highest window, someone’s bothered
to put out bright-red potted flowers.
—
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. Poems of his have appeared recently in The Wayfarer and Leaves of Ink. His chapbook In Stereo appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012.
