I dedicate this humble verse to Saint David patron of poems,
whose beating heart rhymes with mine.
Perhaps I should dedicate this next line to Antony of Padua,
the saint of lost things like this poem that wanders.
As a student I would be remiss to leave off Saint Ambrosia
the saint of all who long to learn, but with my track record,
I should probably add Saint Jude the saint of desperate situations.
I’m sure those two are friends by now since they so often go together.
If I make it through this semester, Saint Dympna would be a more
fitting saint to accept my mad ravings, but if I don’t make it,
my family will have to dedicate a few lines in stone to
Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Antony the Abbot.
“Here lies a lost ‘poet.’
His heart died for want of rhyme,
And though these lines don’t show it,
The addiction he swore off… except for this last time.”
This poem is heavy on irony as I don’t subscribe to the idea of patron saints in general but it was a prompt in a poetry class. I broke into rhyme despite my best efforts and later took the ending to write an entirely different poem, “Broken Rhyme’s Epitaph.”