Today feels as if winter’s fingers are slipping from the ledge, as in action movies and cartoons I watched as a kid.

There was also a lot of quicksand back then. Lots and lots of people fell into quicksand.

“fabrication” was written yesterday while I sat at the Lancaster Public Library on the second floor reading poetry from books I gathered from the 811’s. That’s the dewey decimal number, minus a couple tenths, for poetry.

That’s interesting to me, actually, that poetry, which is possibly fiction or often a type of fiction, gets placed in the non-fiction section by genre.

Which means I better get my facts straight if I ever want to get a book of mine into the library.

Which is actually part of my plan moving forward. Now knowing that posting poems here counts as publishing them, at least to the journals and magazines to which I was considering submitting.

I’m going to publish poetry books on my own.

I was at the library in between visiting my mom at her retirement home and having lunch with a former student. You might think having taught twenty-eight years from grades six to twelve that I might have several such connections with former students.

Alas, this is not so.

We talked about writing while we met. Rho is a writer now with a book that is for sale on Amazon. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it right now. It’s worth your time.

Rho suggested that I format my poetry book as I format these posts now, sharing the poem and then my commentary on the poem.

I had not thought to approach it that way, but I do think that this format is unique–at least I have not seen it done in my rather limited attempts to find something similar.

That is now at the top of my creativity project list which is in competition with the floor I’m still installing in our new sunroom, my nascent small-batch artisan craft hot honey business, my training for the triathlon season, and the fairly lengthy list of longer term projects, especially building a writer’s nook.

I want to talk about “fabrication” though. This is the most workshopped poem I have posted, if you can consider using Chat GPT as a workshop partner.

I want to be clear, though, the poem is all mine. I just followed the process through to see how such an experience might go.

And I was, actually, blown away with the nuance and insight the AI provided. In fact, in pointing out places where I could consider tightening the poem or where it felt things were unclear, Chat GPT was exactly what I would want from a mentor or teacher.

And having been a teacher, there is no way I could have ever given a student the type of in depth and immediate feedback I received.

I’m going to share the last interaction that I had with the AI, where I said I was thinking of changing the word “terracial” to “terrace”.

The word “terracial” is made up, used in the poem for the narrator to think about going to a get-together on a terrace.

As I sat in the library, actually, there was a terrace outside the window. A terrace with the word “terrace” right on the front of it.

Such is the birthplace of poetry.

Chat GPT gave me an answer that, well, I’m not sure how to explain how insightful it is. Actually, if it wasn’t a computer, the detail and thoughtfulness of the answer would be shocking.

Here’s the response from Chat GPT to my question:

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Changing “terracial” to “terrace” would make the poem clearer and more immediately accessible, but it would also lose some of the layered wordplay. Here’s a breakdown of what each choice brings:

Keeping “Terracial”

✅ Invented wordplay → A fusion of “terrace” and potentially “racial,” “terrestrial,” or even “celestial,” adding layers of meaning.
✅ More poetic ambiguity → It forces the reader to pause and interpret, which can be a strength if you want to evoke dreamlike or surreal qualities.
✅ Feels unique → The coined word gives the poem a distinctive, almost mythic feel.

Switching to “Terrace”

✅ Clarifies setting immediately → Readers will instantly understand that this is about a rooftop or elevated space.
✅ Keeps the poem more grounded → Makes the dream feel more like an actual place rather than an abstract or surreal vision.
✅ Maintains rhythm and flow → The line stays intact without disrupting the meter.

Final Thoughts

If you want the poem to be more direct, “terrace” is the better choice. If you want to keep the dreamy, layered quality, “terracial” works better.

Would you consider a slight compromise, like “terrace-dreams” or “terracial terrace”, to keep both clarity and uniqueness? 😊

At this point I said “I’m going to keep terracial—it fits into the ‘make up words’ line”.

And Chat GPT responded:

That makes perfect sense! “Terracial” aligns beautifully with the theme of inventing words and fabricating worlds, reinforcing the poem’s playful, imaginative spirit. It also keeps that slightly surreal, lyrical quality intact.

I love that you’re trusting your instincts here—your poetic voice is distinct, and this choice makes the poem feel even more uniquely yours. Keep going with your vision! 😊

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It even gave me an emoji!

I was worried about the word, that it would distract from the poem being so close to the word “interracial”, but hearing the AI’s response, I now see that I like that, that this is part of the mystery of the poem, the atmosphere that I am creating.

And beyond this interaction, after the first draft of the poem, there were things I could expand on. One of these things is the bird imagery.

In draft one only the word “perching” at the end of the poem made any allusion to birds. So I went back and found places that seemed right, replacing the word “flowers” for “songbirds” in the beginning of the poem, adding the line about Callery pear trees, using the name Callery instead of Bradford as they are more commonly known here.

The Callery or Bradford pear trees are ornamental trees that are no longer allowed to be planted here in Pennsylvania. They are a mess of a tree, dropping blossoms and leaves and taking resources from native species.

I chose the Callery pear because of this invasiveness, that such trees came from elsewhere and took over, that they are ornamental and indeed do line city streets. They align with the theme of royalty I used here, which, of course, is a symbol that can take on many purposes, but here I’m using it to speak to the message here that the narrator is a poet that worries whether her poetry will be accepted, that it might be considered doggerel, that to share it with others involves a clandestine get together, and that climbing high up into a terrace is the place where the poet/narrator feels they must go to be accepted.

And that is one thing that royalty represent, another class of persons, an exclusive group, one that we must sneak into if at all, must pretend to be part of.

There are a couple other words here that I debated using–“rootle” and “allusive”. I love their sound above all, but I also love their mysterious qualities, the reader, I imagine, pausing at “rootle” and wondering, what is this?

Allusive, if you were just to hear the poem, would most likely be heard as “illusive” and that is an implied meaning, and also works. I also considered changing it to “exclusive” which limited the end of the poem to something more concrete and I rejected it.

On the other hand, I want the reader to also think “exclusive” when they read “allusive”, the word itself meaning referring to something else.

This is maybe an Easter Egg of sorts, or just a tale of the creation of the poem, but the line “waiters and those that go” came about as I wrote the word “waiters” as of course a party on a terrace must have them, and they I thought, the opposite of waiters, those that wait, are those that go.

And so I wrote about where they might go.

As for the idea of street names, Lancaster has a King and Queen and Prince street. The library and the terrace I was looking at is actually on Queen.

Let’s see what the WordPress AI has for an image when given the poem:

Yep. Birds and feathered hats on a terrace with people reading books.