What is this washing over me

What is this washing over me

But experience

Will the weight of life

Ever ease

Heavy is the traveller’s heart

The heft of it

Exceeding expectation

Idiosyncratic pleasure

A lifeblood

For so long

Diluted in pursuit of

Interest when

For you, no one smiles

Happiness is not

Waiting behind a counter

To be collected

There is cold comfort

In extremis

There is no wealth

In a dearth

Of emotion

When so much is seen

In isolation

Experience is reductive

No more than processing

Information relayed

Stimuli coded

Reconfigured in memorial

Of a connection

When what once was made

Were memories

Made real in the

Moment of their sharing

Unless in the tipping

Of the glass

You pause

To savour the gentle burn

Of aged malt

A simple second to

Collect your thoughts

And see the children

Laughing in a rented canoe

The river sparkling

In the early evening sun

As office workers

Begin their stumble

Out of darkened rooms

To hurry back across the bridge

Homeward bound

Narrators of their own story

A maid hoover’s the carpet

Another polishes a table

As a bored couple

Ignore each other

Over an afternoon tea

Catching up with social media

How would they fare

On their own

As a weight of experience

Washed over them

What would they see

In this finely presented

Though slightly pretentious

Hotel

Whilst sitting alone

With their thoughts

Perhaps much the same as me.