3 AM Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport  

I’m sitting on the cold, hard floor,
thinking about my morning flight to Guatemala,
thinking and feeling lines for a poem
when a man, riding a floor scrubber, round
and around the counters, manuevers through,
around the cordoned off aisles,
riding, the round brush circling,
the man riding, returns, pushing yellow cones,
warning: caution, wet floors in two languages.

I see a poem in the three girls, sleeping
on the floor as soundly as though they sleep
in their own rooms, sleeping,
heads against the glass partition,
protecting them from a fall down one floor
into the escalator. Two ot them wear  jeans,
not blue but orange and green and both wear
white Converse. The third sleeper wears black
stilletto heels like stage dancers wear
when they perform for tips. She wears a red
dress with black, ragged circles, not polka dots,
but more Black-eyed Susans.

The girl in the dress sits up,
yawning, looking at me, her right
shoulder exposed and her arm bare
almost to her elbow, her left
shoulder covered. Yawning,
she looks at me, yawns,
aware of herself, not
self-conscious like a young
lady might be, having no
concern about all the stretch-neck
dress reveals, yawning,
she smiles and lies back down
into her space, and sleeps.