Encouraged to write poems

For a collaborative endeavor

I read up, reviewed

And started counting measures.

An iambic pentameter,

A rhyming couplet and a triplet,

And then more literature explain

A sestina, a villanelle, a sonnet.

They say there’s a pattern to be followed

Maybe an ababb, an abccb, a 5-7-5,

and yet when you read the masters

There’s hardly a constant derived.

The rules and patterns

Just a vestige not measured

As masters follow their own cadence

Sending a message most treasured.

Thus after following the measures

And hearing only flats and sharps,

You realize it’s not the numbers and letters

But the rhythm of the heart.

• May 11, 2020