december 3
predawn, -4°C wind chill, first dusting of snow of the season.
usually working with invisible ink,
neighborhood night artists recognize a gift in a blink,
rushing to use the season’s first dusting of snow
at three a.m. to create a pop-up show:
a rabbit works in tidy morse code, quickly tamping
a precise diagonal streak of dot-dot-dash stampings,
lagomorph wannabe-jackson-pollacks wildly enact
a collaborative throw-paint-on-canvas-style abstract,
oak leaves on the street dust themselves in white outlined in black,
arrange themselves in pleasing asymmetrical layouts and stacks.
street lights put on a shadow show with ease,
using as props utility poles, wires, mailboxes, and stark trees,
while a storm drain grate paints a white grid outlined
by a square black mat and white frame, quite refined.
a manhole cover circumscribes a perfect ring
and fills it with textured asemic writing,
and cracks in the legion hall parking lot trace themselves
with pastry piping precision, like elves,
playing with evanescent iced geometric shape and line,
very piet mondrian, though strictly b&w in design.
a short while after the artists depart,
before sunrise, before people and cars start
moving, i stand transfixed by each work of art.
—dotty seiter
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July 2022
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Notes about poem and art:
• “december 3” is a snapshot of an ephemeral exhibit that probably took less than an hour to curate and was gone in short order as soon as human business and the sun’s bit of warmth erased all traces of the delicate display.
• Link here to learn about the blind-contour-and-neurographic-drawing-exploration featured above. That post ends with the words “Now what? No idea.” Three-plus years later, I am happy to announce that an idea presented itself unexpectedly! Accordingly, you’ll soon see an answer to the now-what question!
dottyseiter: now playing 
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