Summary

Rita Dove’s "Vacation" describes a generic scene in an airport terminal. The author focuses on the minutiae of the waiting to board.

The very first line of the poem sets the reader on course for this encounter. It is marked by a seemingly earnest confession of love for “the hour before takeoff” (1). Dove describes this as an hour of “no time” (2) in which the traveler is in a nomadic state, “no home / but the gray vinyl seats linked like / unfolding paper dolls” (2-4). The narrator’s inner voice then describes the scene in the terminal. She notices “ragtag nuclear families” (8) and “the heeled bachelorette trying / to ignore a baby’s wail” (10-11). The scene is at once hectic and ordered, an assemblage of all different types of travelers in all different states.

The narrator then describes catching a glimpse of an “exhausted mother...