travel agency

snow on the ground still covers
most of his neighborhood’s
real estate, the pristine white
of last week’s late-winter newfall
melting just a bit in today’s warmth,
revealing grit thrown by plows
in an earlier clean-up effort.

enough already
with winter, he grouses,
disgruntled and restless.

heavy with cabin-fever,
he takes himself
to the front porch to meditate,
closes his eyes, settles
into a restorative pose,
drifts away breath by breath
to what turns out to be
logan airport, with activity
surrounding him
in all directions—

here a tufted titmouse asking
a white-breasted nuthatch if he’s done
with the sports section of the globe,
there a northern cardinal making noise
about how long the line
at dunkin’ donuts is, blue jays
and crows getting very vocal
about politics.

an insistent starling
with harsh rapid-fire delivery
squeaks at everyone within earshot
about the great deal she got
for their family reunion,
all 30 of them in matching
black t-shirts embossed
with white speckles.
two song sparrows,
besties since fledging, chitter
nonstop.

black-capped chickadees,
one at gate 7, the other at 8,
compete to get this month’s
customer service rep
award, each aiming
to outperform the other
in a classic sing-off
while making announcements
with pure two-note
fluting whistles that
carry with clarity above
the constant conversation
and hustle-and-hubbub
of countless travelers,

all here at the terminal
with tickets for flights
from winter to spring.

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• “travel agency” is a poetic conceit—an extended metaphor. I first tried my hand at this type of poem early last summer as part of an online class I participated in, and now I’ve fallen happily into another conceit!
• Having wrapped up my Let’s Face It With Friends series recently, I’m hoping to immerse myself in a new series, this time an exploration of houses. Again, as with Let’s Face It With Friends, I begin with only the tiniest hints of what direction I might take. In my first piece, I Hear a Knock at My Door, I infused collaged house images from an advert into a neurographic experiment; I got myself started. Now what? With the work in progress featured here, I’m playing with collaged scraps cut from my stash of old paintings to see what ideas arise.