The Writer Working Hard

This morning I put the apostrophe in

and this afternoon I took it out.

Oscar Wilde's comic wit

about the writer working hard.

Revision has lately become the sign

of seriousness, as in I revise

some poems a hundred times, 

maybe more. A word of praise here, 

a critical word there.

Before that there was the debate

if poems not stitched with end-sounds

were playing tennis without a net.

Late summer, August, hot, but

chickadees forming platoons.

Three months until the snow flies, 

sure as the June my father died.