november 6
430a, furnace just waking up.

a mid-autumn morning’s waking begins,
this mid-autumn morning’s waking,
today’s waking.

before she moves at all
before auto-pilot kicks in
with its robotic mindlessness
before reflexively jumping into go go go,
instead,
today,
she chooses
wakeful stillness first.
here i am, she notices from within
and offers a silent prayer:
slow. deep. quiet.
in everything i do.

instead of grinding the gears
of the machine of routine
in such a way as to be done
before she even knows she’s awake
she invites herself to open
to each movement
in its fullness.
she slips from under the warmth of the covers,
arranges their softness to surround her husband,
drops her pillow on the bedside hitchcock chair,
hears its gentle thunk.

to wake today is
to praise
the hush in which she dresses
in the near dark,
only the bathroom nightlight
to offer faint illumination.
to wake today is
to praise
the clothing draped on the reading chair
last night before sleep.
now, mostly through touch and sound,
the testing of balance as she stands, stepping
one leg then the other into panties and then into fleece leggings,
the slight textured friction of socks (new! wool!)
as she adjusts heel of sock to heel of foot,
shelf-bra tank top and ribbed henley shirt
pulled on over her head one after the other
with little sparks of static electricity,
the sound of her hoodie zipper sliding up its tracks,
the cozy cocoon of her puff vest,
all capturing her body heat.

to wake today is
to praise her husband’s presence and
their inner awareness of each other,
he still in his snug nest,
he still with eye mask on,
she in a handshake with a new day.

she pushes her feet into her shoes
puts on her glasses
shuts the eyeglasses case, muffling the sound
of its hinges’ wanting to snap the lid in place,
opens the bedroom door with a tiny click of the latch
and a creak from its upper hinge,
walks into her study
there to praise
her hearing devices, with the blinking of their tiny green lights
and the subtle short tune in each ear indicating
recharged! ready!,
her phone also recharged and ready.
she pivots back to the bedroom
to flip the wall switch for soft light,
the signal to her husband that
it is his turn to join the recharged and ready.

to wake today is
to praise her husband’s flinging back the covers—
and he does fling!—
and his waking-up noise-making,
to praise tugging up the crumpled sheets together,
pulling them taut,
setting pillows in place—
percale bluebirds upright on their branches,
aligning the stripes of the duvet
with the edge of the foot of the mattress.
he heads to the bathroom to shave,
she places a ted kooser book of poetry and her eye pillow
on her side of the bed—a visual promise
of midday meditation—and goes downstairs
to bundle up for her first walk of the day.

chance to praise chance to praise
chance to praise
chance to open
arms wide open arms wide
open arms wide.

peace does not arrive and take up
permanent residence,
it is born moment by moment.
waking today in this way,
this slow deep quiet way,
she lands in each moment.
to land in each moment
is to praise each ordinary motion
as the small sacrament it is
that celebrates her being alive.

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• “november 6” is a hymn of grateful praise.
• Knows the Answers is the first new face I’ve painted since the September Zoom Class I took, and it is a painting whose process included knowing next to nothing! I found a random reference photo online, tore a page from an old copy of Little Women which I’d previously used as a painting journal while living for two months with my daughter in 2020, whitewashed the whole page with acrylic gesso, and sketched in a few guiding marks with pastel pencil. But I really didn’t know where to begin, and the sketch marks were barely visible. In the interim, I’d posted Kindergarten Dotty where my followers encouraged me to channel the 5-year-old child in myself, so that is what I did with this painting. Somehow I found kindergarten Dotty’s openness to just starting, to just getting paint on paper and then responding to it, again and again and again. The gift was that I got fully absorbed in the process and loved being there! Ta da!