                         DOWN THE DRAIN


Another quiet night
In another hotel room
Somewhere in America--
And again,
The bathtub drain plug
Won't plug the bathtub drain.

Nothing unusual there--
Just take a shower and forget about it.
Hotel bathtub drain plugs never work.

But why?

Perhaps the gods of quiet dreamy times
Relaxed in a warm tub
Have some quarrel with the gods of hotels
And are taking subtle revenge.
Or perhaps they have a secret longing
For simpler days at Grandma's house
With a plain rubber stopper on a length of chain,
And have scornfully turned their backs
On today's new-fangled
Microprocessor-controlled
Bath Drain Management Systems.

Or--more sinister thought--
Conspiracy afoot,
Hotel management deeply implicated:
You can't overflow the tub
If you can't fill it in the first place.

When I get home
I'll ask my friends
At Conspiracy Central

And in the meantime,
Either improvise some way to stop the drain
Or else
Just take a shower and forget about it.



                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0515 hr  2/18/84
                                        entered 2300 hr  2/22/84
                                        format  2215 hr  2/08/92
