Penny remembered the words of her mother,
“Why can’t you behave like your sister and brother?
It’s simply unreas’nable,” mama would scold,
“A penguin may never complain of the cold!
“You live in Antarctica – this is our weather
That’s why you have blubber and feather on feather
The ice is your home, girl, despite what you wish
And don’t give me that about not liking fish!
“You’ll eat and enjoy it – you’d best start obeying
I’ve heard what the birds all around us are saying
I feel so embarrassed I think I could die
You’re not into swimming, you’d much rather fly?!
“Your plumage is boring, it couldn’t be duller
You hate black and white and you long to have colour
You want to be different, I’m telling you, ‘No!’
Just be like the others and go with the floe!”
“How long in the far-distant past that all seems,”
Thought Penny, the penguin, now living her dreams
With her tan and her long scarlet scarf made of silk
In a hot air balloon, sipping coconut milk
A ride to the north on a scientists’ vessel
Nine months in a circus pretending to wrestle
And then her first movie with Goldberg and Barr
She reached for the heavens and now she’s a star!
From “Chryme and Punishment”