LEAP YEAR

                    It’s Leap Year and the twenty-ninth of Feb,
                    That extra day that comes but once in four,
                    The rookie misstep of a West Point pleb
                    That all uptight precisionists deplore.

                    But libertarians, more generously,
                    Applauding what is odd and whimsical,
                    Delight in such irregularity
                    That proves the cosmos less predictable.

                    Just so it is a sonnet should not be,
                    Despite conventional parameters,
                    A piece of metrical machinery
                    In which nothing untoward occurs,

                       For even in such strictly formal matters,
                       An extra beat won’t tear the verse to tatters.

(All right, I know: it's plebE, which doesn't rhyme.)

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