Just Because It Rhymes Doesn’t Make It True

Maybe some of you are lucky enough to not have been taught, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking," which, in reality, is true less than fifty percent of the time. I thought we had stopped teaching this nonsense years ago but when my son came home from kindergarten singing this, I knew I needed to silently vent my frustrations, in poetry.

When two vowels go walking…

a lot of shit can happen

Sure, sometimes things 

seem straight and plain

Other times 

things get weird,

awkward, and

inconvenient

Friendships are built,

enemies appear,

alliances can be found

Perhaps the vowel pairs 

were insufficiently prepared 

for the trouble

they would encounter

Their walks can be quiet

(to be fair, it is easy

to put one’s foot

in one’s mouth,

even being a vowel),

but they can also be 

noisy or downright loud

If already they are  

in the mood for food,

they might meander

into a restaurant

for beans or fruit

or southern biscuits

Or maybe they 

ate earlier

before their shoes

hit the boardwalk

Occasionally 

the second vowel

even guides the first 

to great heights

They might take a cruise

or, if they are feeling

especially adventurous,

a canoe all the way 

to Australia,

or in the preferred 

pronunciation of my

elementary school teacher,

Ā-streyl-ī

Written April 13, 2019