I work my day job too much. It doesn’t give me time enough to write. I have to steal time – usually from the Sandman. And that has never much worked for me; I’m a guy who needs his sleep…

But it turns out to be less catastrophic than I tend to think. I was scrounging for recent poems just now to bolster this blog a little, and I found a folder of 61 sonnet drafts from April 2022. They are raw, of course, from lack of practice. But they are something, and that is more than nothing.

Here is the first of those:

04/02/22.

here we go again, Liza, another

marathon of words and rhymes iambic

running into small, labyrinthine rooms

to build hospitable fires.  some other

might find them stifling – their limbic

brain in rebellion. dwelling in dank tombs

I fell off the track, Liza, which way now

to go with this one? shall I take a bow

and exit stage left – but no! the show must

go on! even first missteps are steps

taken and better than nothing ventured

nothing lost . . . fortune favors the bold, Liza,

so onward we march our little iambs

slow out of the gate, yet resolved to place!

DM Pitchford copyright 2022