An Elegy to Rhyme

Here is a playful poem which I wrote for my Creative Writing class. For that assignment, we were supposed to write an elegy and were not allowed to use rhyme, so naturally, I combined those two items and used them as the basis of my poem.

An Elegy to Rhyme

By Melody Beerbower, October 24, 2015

O Crutch upon which I once leant,

Like a cliché, I thought that if I employed your beauty

Everyone would know what I

Was striving to express.

Should not the language of poetry be ethereal and fine?

To reach this high standard, I thought I must position

Echoing syllables at the end of every

Row of flowing, twisting words.

Without you, O Thread of Continuity, coupling together my mismatched ideas,

I trembled to ponder that my oft prosaic scribbles

Might not, at last, be classified as poetry.

In this fear I labored like a dutiful scribe,

And yet enjoyed my labors

Believing that this was the one thing

To which I must adhere with vehemence

If I were to obtain the ultimate essence of Poetry.

But, alas, ‘twas not so…

Woe, poor Words of Echoing Stem!

And Woe to me!

In a crippling stroke of heartlessness,

You were wrenched from my grasp

And I was pushed forward to find my stumbling way without you.

For I have been forced

To bury your archaic beauty in the tattered notebooks of Junior High.

And now at last the time has come to say

That I can see the reason

For this parting.

How oft dist you bind me in straightjacket form,

Forcing me with ghastly rigidity to twist my sentences

Into convoluted knots the very kindred of that ancient entanglement

Which only sword could rend asunder—  

All of this in order to satiate your voracious appetite

Like that of a toothless lion fruitlessly pursuing its prey.

Time and again, in short poems and long

You coerced me to choose words that were simply

Inferior and lacking in the depth and power I sought.

Loosed from your unmitigated structure,

I no longer have to squint at list upon list of miniature words in a dusty volume

Hoping that I might manipulate one to resemble my intended meaning.

I am at last free to select with care that word which epitomizes my thoughts

And brings them to life.

And yet…

Yet, at times…

I still long to call you back,

And hold in my fingers the steadiness of your polished symmetry,

And catch in my ear the echoing of your familiar cadence,

And know in my soul the thrill of that flawless word drawn from the stars

Slipping, unforced, into your stringent frame.

But alas, O Wiley Duplicator of Sounds,

Who doth both repel

And draw me in

It is my lot that I should’st endeavor

To make this separation last

For the rest of my time here

That I might grow stronger by your absence.