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.

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