Albatross

It’s a ghost in the night that keeps me awake
with whispering, muttering, sighing,
and nudges in my poetic ribs.
It pokes me with imagery
and ties me up in allegory
until I reach for notebook and pen.

It’s a ghost in the early morning, a wisp
of verse draped across my aching neck,
a metaphoric albatross
checking rhymes, ensuring
enjambment and caesura make
sense, without a syntactical break.

By dawn, it’s drifted into early sunlight
with the spectral grey remains of night.

Kim M. Russell, 29^th April 2024

^{Image by Paul Carroll on Unsplash}

It’s day twenty-nine, the penultimate day of Na/GloPoWriMo and, at NaPoWriMo the optional prompt is Taylor Swift based. Not my musical cup of tea, but I’ll give it a go. In recognition of her new double album, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. The challenge is to select one these words and write a poem that uses the word as its title. I chose ‘albatross’ and rewrote an old poem.