From a few years ago, I've got another sonnet with an extra foot:
Homework
My daughter's learning how the planets dance,
How curtseys to an unseen partner's bow
Are clues that tell an ardent watcher how
To find new worlds in heaven's bleak expanse,
How even flaws in this numerical romance
Are fruitful: patient thought and work allow
Mistake to marry meaning. She writes now
That Tombaugh spotting Pluto wasn't chance.
Beside her, I write, too. Should I do more
Than nudge her at her homework while I try
To master patterns made so long before
My birth that stars since then have left the sky?
I'll never know. But what I try to teach
Is trying. She may grasp what I can't reach.
But I did that on purpose, a little self-referential wink. Tim Steele and Rhina Espaillat both spotted it in a heartbeat, and, for what it's worth, thought it a good idea (though I can't get the thing published). I think what bothers me is that this time I didn't realize I had three supposedly unstressed syllables in a row. Still, you know, I think it has a pentameter feel — all those 'r's and 'l's and long vowels do beg for some kind of elision …
8:52:12 PM 
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