Cheese Penguins and Other Impossible Things

I have to say, I'm a little at a loss for words today from all the events surrounding the inauguration. In a good way. I am hopeful for the future of the country and so very proud of the open mindedness of Americans, who attempted and succeeded at something once thought impossible or even unthinkable.

I just keep thinking of one of my favorite poems, by Sarah Lindsay, that illustrates the power of hope and belief even in times where there could be none.

Cheese Penguin
The world is large and full of ice;

it is hard to amaze. Its attention

may take the form of sea leopards.

That much any penguin knows

that staggers onto Cape Royds in the spring.

They bark, they bow one to another,

she swans forward, he walks on her back,

they get on with it. Later

he assumes his post, an egg between his ankles.

Explorers want to see everything, even

the faces of penguins whose eggs have been stolen

for science. At night they close the tent flaps

to fabricate sundown, hunch together

over penguin fried in butter, and write up their notes.

Mornings they clump over shit-stained rocks,

tuck eggs in their mittens, and shout.

Got one, got one. They shove back their balaclavas;

they feel warm all over.

The penguins scurry for something to mother,

anyone's egg will do, any egg

no matter how stiff and useless the contents,

even an egg-shaped stone to warm—

and one observer slips to a widow

a red tin that once held cheese.

Finally the wooden ship sails, full of salted penguin,

dozens of notebooks, embryos,

explorers who missed as little as possible. But:

The penguin cherished the red tin on her feet.

She knew what was meant to happen next

and she wanted it, with a pure desire

refined for thirty-five million years

in the dark eye of every progenitive cell.

And it happened. A red tin beak broke through

and a baby flopped into the rock nest, smelling of cheese—

but soon he was covered with guano, so that was all right.

Begging for krill from his aunts' throats just like the others.

Winter: blue ice, green ice, black sea,

hot breath of yellow-jawed killer whales.

Summer: pink slime on black rock,

skuas that aim for the eye. Krill, krill,

a shivering molt, krill, krill, a mate,

and so on. And though he craved dairy products

he never found any; though he was miraculous

no one came to say so. The world is large,

and without a fuss has absorbed stranger things than this.

Sarah Lindsay

Primate Behavior (Grove Press, 1997)

"We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." --Barack Obama