NaPoWriMo Day 10: Spirited away

Day 10 of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
 
Prompt:
Yesterday, we looked at a poem that used sound in a very particular way to create a slow and mysterious feeling. Mark Bibbins’ poem, At the End of the Endless Decade, uses sound very differently, with less eerieness and more wordplay. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that uses alliteration and punning.

 
Spirited away
 
A small medium at large,
she was not so small as to be miniscule,
invisible, naked to the inquisitive eye,
but the ‘perfect’ people just didn’t notice her.
 
At social gatherings, she’d gaze into the punch bowl,
poised with ladle, trying to scry a meaning
in the bubbling liquid brew – cue three witches
who’d mistake her for a silent statue
and scoop it up out of her paws.
She’d be too goddammed gobsmacked
to argue while they chitter-chattered,
helped themselves to a dastardly double
and scooted off. The cheek of it.
 
She was always the last to board a bus,
too polite to point out that she was first in line.
In her mind, it didn’t go that way: it was handbags
at dawn and a beastly battle to the bitter end.
 
Even a spaniel mistook her for a lamppost once.
So soft and quiet, you might mistake her for a bush.
Her hair was evidently quite bush-like.
The odd sparrow would seek to nest in it,
get disappointed at its gormless attempt
at a classy home build.
Not up to the proper pecking order.
 
One day she bought her very first crystal ball,
fashioned from a big slab of black tourmaline.
Staring into its sacred core, the seconds swirled
until her eager eyes glazed over.
 
There’s nothing to see, she thought,
until her mother turned up and asked why
she hadn’t washed her hair for three days straight
and why twigs stuck out at awkward angles
where that bloody bird had tried to nest.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 10, 2025