honey
       for rwt—this, my simple truth on a summer thursday

well,
we decide to boycott amazon.
dave cancels prime,
figures out other places to shop,
and i pretty much just stop
buying things.

but then,
rosemerry wahtola trommer,
her poetry.
i want to give
all the honey
as a gift.
so i place an order
at the book shop
in beverly farms, a spot
i haven’t visited for years
and years and years.

when i get the call today
telling me my order is in,
i huff. not in the mood
to be interrupted,
not of a mind
to make the drive.

yet, oh!
as i walk from car to shop,
cool breezes
blow off the ocean
from just a block away,
sunlight warms my face,
shore-smells
signal low tide
with its salty exposed seagrass
and skittering hermit crabs.

and, oh!
books and books
hang out together on the shelves—
familiar friends,
and strangers
whose names i know
but haven’t met yet.
and, in person,
hannah behind the counter
passing a book
from her hands
to my hands—
conversation,
connection,
uplift.

well,
well,
well!

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• “honey” is a modern-day narrative poem written in free verse with just the tiniest bit of internal and straight-up rhyme in place for good measure. I found both pleasure and challenge in moving from experience to free-write to poetry.
• All the Honey is another mood-mini, i.e. I covered much of a sketchbook page with water, dripped in watercolor, and tipped my sketchbook this way and that according to whatever struck my fancy as I watched the colors shift in that moment, on that day, in that mood. I later came in with pens, and this is where they took me.