Tampa Bay Hotel

What’s so interesting

About the modern age

Is its insistence at

Preserving history.

We hear so much

About a crowded world

And yet much of it

Is being kept

More or less 

Exactly as it was 

In prior ages.

By this I mean buildings.

The Tampa Bay Hotel,

In my backyard,

For instance.

When I first came here

Its spires,

Fashioned after

Moorish minarets,

Were immediately

Distinctive,

So I became 

A little obsessed 

With finding out

More about it.

Eventually I learned

What it was, 

When it was built,

And how it is

Maintained today.

As for being a hotel,

That much is obvious.

In 1891

It was planted 

By a figure

Of refutable past,

Another reminder

That the vagaries of time

Are sometimes 

To be navigated

With precision.

It served,

At it and the region’s peak,

As a staging ground

For the Spanish-American War.

And the years dwindled

From there,

Until modern times,

When the preservation process

Began

And it was absorbed

Into a collegiate campus

And now stands

For a series

Of classrooms

Still in use

Today.

I toured it

On the first day

Of this year,

And that

Was a satisfying day.