Yes, I spent last night
inside the fiberglass blue whale
suspended in New York's
Natural History Museum,
but that goes way back,
back to when I was young,
crawling inside the puppy's kennel
to lie with my knees
against my chest.
My biggest conquest,
until now, occured in Japan,
a popular train station hotel
where I hid in each of a hundred
coffin-sized rooms, honeycomb-stacked,
beds and lightswitches
all the way down.
It wasn't the difficulty of the whale
that appealed to me, but rather
the private knowledge, the chance
to be one of the civilian few
to see her chambered stomach
had been painted pink.