Iggy's Return

Should I try to work on my villanelle book,

or is it too cold outside?
Does that seem like a non-sequitur?

Well, maybe it is.
I’ve given up rhyming too—
plenty of that in my villanelle book.

But a rhyme can be very faint
and still count. Something can’t
be a non-sequitur if it rhymes—

that’s the secret of the form,
the secret of poetry
itself, as I try to show in my villanelle book.

It follows that to give up rhyming
altogether would be to give up meaning—
everything would be a non-sequitur,

including the sawing caw of a crow in the tree,
just now flown off.
How can I work on my villanelle book

if I just keep on writing more villanelles?
I can’t keep up. My friend sent
me a picture of a poem in my earlier villanelle book—
Iggy revenu.