The Final Line

By Dan Mulhollen

I wrote a poem
I thought was fine,
Until I read
The final line.

It all made sense
up to those words,
But after that
Strange things occurred.

I had five stanzas
which did not rhyme,
And did not flow
In steady time.

Then suddenly
A meter stuck,
The endings rhymed
Thought, "what the heck?"

It was my luck
To quickly find,
A nasty wreck
And did unwind.

All of the those words
I had just wrote,
The meter got saggy
And the rhyming broke.

So I left this mess
And despite the bother,
Tried again
To write another.

But any poem
That's worth the time,
Will make sense
To the final line.