My Apolgy to my Writer's Group

I have discovered for the ump-teenth time

There is really no home for the poet of rhyme

And while I admit I have much to learn

There is a barred pasture for which I yearn

Where Tennyson, Long-fellow and Blake recline

Among all the great masters of rhythm and rhyme

My admiration runs deep for the artist of prose

The skill of their quill; the metaphorical rose

I strive to be brave enough to venture among

The haiku, cinquain, nonet, tanka song

But when I have wandered their courtyards sublime

I return once again to the pastures of rhyme

Beauty is in the eye of beholder, its true

I have understood as I beheld the senyru

And marveled at the tools of simplicity

Creating pure, breath-taking imagery

I bow my head, the truth now I know it

Dare I to call myself a poet?

Yet happily I gather words in my thought

Dither about for the elusive jot

I care not so much about status or title

The lure of words cannot keep my thought idle

Am I a poet or merely a shadow

Drifting in bliss through a wide open meadow?

So while some may gag at rhyme’s stringent plot

I have not learned how to un-rhyme my thought

Over and over I am lured by its dance

Yet drawn simultaneously by free-verse romance

So quietly I sit at the back of the room

Happy to observe poet’s in full bloom

© Janet Martin

I am blessed to be in a wonderful Writer's Group!

Glynis, I am not afraid of rejection

but I have not the slightest sense of direction.

Most publishers prefer the free verse, not rhyme

I think I was born in the wrong frame of time

So I must study prose's secret ingredient

For I have no free verse I consider expedient

to offer up to a publisher at this time.

You see, I tend to be a poet of rhyme:)

I'm posting this selfishly to ease my injured pride

before I see you tomorrow night...

sigh, I think sometimes
I think in rhymes...