This journey I am calling quadrupedal
Since over three days it will have four legs,
This scruffy dog I am renaming Wheedle,
For kisses he delivers while he begs.

That dachshund is a desk upon whose back
A halting sonnet I seek to contrive.
The Goodyear grounded under skies of black:
A Giant tethered by the 405.

Of course, sometimes a pithy name reflects
Times that truth fled into cerebral swirls,
So when I saw planes land at LAX,
My brain supplied the phrase “a string of pearls.”

And on such nights I might say poetry
Is saying what the altered mind can see.

The final word of my initial draft
Cuts like a fiery sword into my brain,
And in my frenzy I shall seize the haft-
For editing I’ll need it’s blade again!

For even as I celebrate the end
Of that most painful process of producing
Fictional fabric which sharp eyes will rend
Into which criticisms I’ll be loosing.

Such skirmishes do not result in wounds
Excepting those that land upon my pride.
But to my faults I am kindly attuned,
Particularly when my brain is fried.

I’ll let my story sing me off to sleep,
Regardless of how much of it I keep.

It’s been too long since I have written fiction.
Though sonnets with my talent set align,
I can’t deny my potent predilection
For telling tales of more than fourteen lines.

And so I wrestled with a piece of writing
That previously had given me some trouble,
Whose characters just wanted to keep fighting,
And so my prior efforts I redoubled.

I let myself explore the foolish fancy
Of giving the first scenes a good rewrite.
Though unfamiliar genres can be chancy,
A part of me just knew that it was right.

The fictional inertia has been routed-
But then I had to write a poem about it.

When work’s intense and sleep’s in deficit
A change in schedule can be bothersome;
Annoyance, which resolves into a snit
Do not such welcome differences become.

For when work’s done and sleep is immanent
And music dances lightly on the breeze
One can’t maintain a state of discontent,
When sun and joy conspire to bring you ease.

When such gifts come, hold tight to gratitude
For when things will inevitably change;
And with that patient mental latitude,
Experientially expand your range.

And if impatience starts to interfere,
Sit down and order it another beer.

This is a moving-boxes time of year,
When piles of paper stacked precipitously
On horizontal surfaces appear
To cast their leaves away capriciously.

And as shed sheets infect desk after desk
They settle on the work that’s been assigned
And keep appearing, paperwork burlesque,
Resulting in paralysis of mind.

While teachers yearn for summer to arrive
Administrators brace for fiscal close.
What quarters system sadist did contrive
For both to be coevally imposed?

For one tends to succumb to greater tension
When one cannot be granted an extension.