penny steps into one of my mornings
thank you, penny, for your text message from the red line—dotty
penny’s wake-up alarm
goes off today at 415,
not her usual practice
by a long shot,
tribecca film festival
in new york city
as her spur.
she drags
out of bed
still heavy
with sleep,
asking herself
more than once
as she gets ready
to go,
how does dotty
do it, wake early
every day
to walk
before sunrise?
but then
she herself
steps outside
and sees the moon
[waning,
gibbous,
not yet set],
hears the birds
[song sparrows,
northern cardinals,
american robins],
notices how
otherwise quiet it is
[only her footfalls,
her breath,
a wind whisper].
she hops
on the red line train
at 515—
the first of the day
to depart,
she notes,
very satisfied.
new world!,
she thinks,
enlivened
[inside
this unexpected
predawn poem].
—dotty seiter
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6.75 x 7.5″; watercolor on paper
color swatches after Kata Hull
2026
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Notes about poem and art:
• “penny steps into” was such fun to write, presenting as it did several engaging challenges and many revisions, some of which involved working with a metapoetic slant.
• This watercolor work-in-progress involves my own stepping-into. A friend sent me a postcard image of an oil-and-mixed-media-on-paper painting by Kata Hull entitled What Remains that had me instantly itching to pick up a brush. When I feel that kind of itch, I often paint a “copy” as a way to kickstart an exploration of the concept behind the piece. Here I did just that—imitated in order to generate the possible start of a series inquiry. I’ll share the fuller story of this painting’s journey in later posts. In the interim, this photo captures what I watercolor-painted over the course of my June vacation. I set up a tiny impromptu studio space beside a window in our rental overlooking Norton Lake in Maine, and sat intermittently each day to paint, often with windows open to fresh air and breeze. This start went on to evolve further after I returned home, but I am grateful for the embodied souvenir posted above of those days on the lake.
dottyseiter: now playing 
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