Poem 6: Traveling Dream by Marge Piercy

TRAVELING DREAM

I am packing to go to the airport but somehow I am never packed. I keep remembering more things I keep forgetting. Secretly the clock is bolting forward ten minutes at a click instead of one. Each time I look away, it jumps. Now I remember I have to find the cats. I have four cats even when I am asleep. One is on the bed and I slip  her into the suitcase. One is under the sofa. I drag him out. But the tabby in the suitcase has vanished. Now my tickets have run away. Maybe the cat has my tickets. I can only find one cat. My purse has gone into hiding. Now it is time to get packed. I take the suitcase down. There is a cat in it but no clothes. My tickets are floating in the bath tub full of water. I dry them. One cat is in my purse but my wallet has dissolved. The tickets are still dripping. I look at the clock as it leaps forward and see I have missed my plane. My bed is gone now. There is one cat the size of a sofa.  Analysis        In the first stanza, Piercy writes that she is "packing to go to the airport", like she is making big plans. But these plans never work, as she is "somehow...never packed". She continues on into the second stanza saying that time is "bolting forward".For her, time is passing too quickly, and she seemingly does just does not have enough of it.        She "jumps" into the third stanza, as if she is jumping to a different thought, which highlights the correlation between the word "jump" as used in the poem, and her thought process. Also, in this third stanza, she talks about 4 different types of cats. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by these different cats, but, she does say "I have four cats even when I am asleep", which makes me think that in the narrator's point of view, this person has 4 different types of personalities perhaps? She writes more, the emphasize the 4 personalities when the "tabby in the suitcase has vanished". Sometimes, these personalities tend to disappear.        She continues on into the 5th stanza, writing "now my tickets have run away. maybe the cat has my tickets. I can only find one cat". Throughout this poem, she continues to lose track of where things are.        She delves more into the fact that she needs to get packed, but she can't seem to find her clothes. She claims that her "tickets are floating in the bath". The ticket seems like a source of freedom for her, because the ticket will bring her to the airport in which she will be able to fly away from where she currently is. Since the tickets are floating in the bath, her freedom has been diminished.        In the next stanza, she continues to write that the cats are every where, one including "in [her] purse", and that the "tickets are still dripping". The distractions have served is a disablement to her.          In the final stanza, she notices that time has passed. "...the clock...leaps forward and [she sees she has] missed [the] plane". The distractions from the cats have taken her off the path of success, which was to leave where she currently is. The last line, "there is one cat the size of a sofa" emphasizes a hyperbole that has gotten in the way of the desire to leave.