Noble Frost once stated diamond clear
    That playing netless tennis he’d prefer
To spinning poems whose forms adhere
    To vers libre's cry for rhymeless structure.

Other sculptors of the word
observe the arching coin
flip end on end
and strike the earth -
its other surface facing up,
and raising bullhorns shout
that etching rhyme - bound poems
equates to racket swinging
trapped within a fisher's web.

But as the final stanza closes tightly
    And our image - nourished souls
Dab lips with psychic napkins lightly,

who really gives a damn
what net or lack thereof
we have chosen for our games?

March, 2007

Robert Charles Howard

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/netless-tennis/