One of the last that will leave this season,
the big bird still sports tiny tufts of down,
plopped among the lava rocks like a stooge,
sleepy, pot-bellied, drawing the breeze in,
his wondrous wingspan yet to be unfurled.
He waits to be invited to the world,
unperturbed, harboring a lazy eye.
Who can judge now what will happen
when he wakes from this immature stupor
to find the vastness of sea, the soaring sky?
The waved albatross breeds primarily on Española Island in the Galápagos archipelago.
Albatross images by Andrew Delaney.
Excellent sound and meter in the first seven lines, consistent but not repetitive. The rhyme “unfurled” and “world” brings the two stanzas together. The consistency breaks up a bit in the last three lines, probably because of the trochee of “happen” and “stupor.”