ix.

The first penguin peels her voice,
and the shuffle inside the wall
is a field mouse
rushing an octave through.
When it snows on the mountain,
they feel like improvising.
The sea brushes our earlobes:
skeins and skeins of whisking tails
drumming with silk on the globe.

Poem and reading by Rachel McAlpine cc by 2.0, photo of Mt Taranaki by Denis Bin, CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr