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.