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.