Rhyme Not for the Sake of Rhyming

by Brett Rutherford

What can I say

about poems that rhyme?

Rhyme in mid-line,

or lines apart where least

expected, are fine:

they are like accidents

of digestion, a dash

of pepper. I like, too,

a final couplet, the way

Shakespeare tells us

a scene or speech

has reached its end.

A bow. Applause.

But as for rhyme

at ends of lines,

onward, onward,

plodding, plodding,

pendulum regular,

forced search

of dictionary

all too evident,

jack-hammering,

a thousand times,

no! English is not

a rhyming language.

Drunk monks

and college students

corrupted Latin

with rhyme; then from

Italian it leapt the channel

to infest like unwelcome

caterpillars. Be gone!

Not only has rhyme's

ship sailed, it floated

back, a rotting hulk,

seaweed and barnacles,

seagulls and slime,

fouling our pure waters.

For we who have lived

since Whitman,

rolled to the flow

of beat poetry,

inhaled long breaths

and the abrupt

leaps of improvisation,

rhyme is child's play,

the delight of idiots --

the glue that holds

a song together,

admittedly -- but not

what makes a poem

a poem. Free verse

is tightrope walking,

no net below.