It is Day 509 of the daily new poems. Our poet Anne Stewart thinks it’s Oslo today …
It’s Oslo today, I think,
every morning some new city in the world,
and the hotel walked out from
on a cold spring morning,
when the wind shouts danger
and the passports in the hotel safe,
and we so far from it now, and the urgency
with which we must retrieve them
if we’re to escape – two couples
in different hotels and I rush to theirs
in case they haven’t heard, bound the stairs,
only to find no one home, and rushing down again
to leave and search for them, I find the maids
have strewn the hallways with crumpled bed linen,
pillows, towels, and, in the foyer, laundry carts,
bedroom bins and cleaning trays, brushes,
I run through as an obstacle course
like that desert lizard whose feet barely touch
the sand, legs akimbo, and all is lost – the people,
direction, certainty of who I am – and I take
the bus to no known destination, considering
tears, but my feet are warm and, looking down,
I find I’ve slipped my shoes and, in their place,
leather slippers, soft as down, so fine,
such perfect fit, my toes, ecstatic,
want only to explore the cocoon they’re in,
and a passing ex-pat says, nodding towards them
as he walks the aisle, heading for the doors,
one word: Tartar – and I think Yes,
Turkish slippers, soft as the suede jacket
I have on and they become my world –
partner, friends, passports, just a hint
fading at thought’s periphery –
and my feet feel fabulous, remind me
of that one paraffin foot-wax
indulged in at some spa decades ago,
and I’m afraid, knowing
my feet are bare, I wear no jacket,
there is no bus, no Oslo on my horizon,
and that when I wake to the morning news,
today, again, there will be no comfort.
Anne Stewart