Penguin on the Beach Flashcards
Stranger in his own element,
- othered by the oil
Sea-casualty, the castaway manikin
- excluded from his own environment
- diminutive
- rendered helpless and vulnerable
Waddles in his tailored coat-tails. Oil
- reference to the walk of a penguin
- enjambment
Has spread a deep commercial stain
- spilt by a commercial carrier
- monetisation has real life consequences
- materialism
Over his downy shirt front. Sleazy, grey,
- feathers
- tainted making it less
- unnatural stain
It clogs the sleekness. Far too well
- normally sleek ‘fur’ can be clogged with oil
- it can remember the trauma, affecting it physically and emotionally
- enjambment
He must recall the past, to be so cautious:
- suffering from PTSD
- his home is no longer a place of safety
- colon provides an explanation
Watch him step into the waves. He shudders
- without exuberance in its own natural element
- shock, fearfulness
Under the froth; slides, slips, on wet sand,
- sibilance, increase in rhythm
- foregrounds the penguins hesitation and reluctance to go back into the sea
Escaping to dryness, dearth, in a white cascade
- reluctance to enter the sea
- scarcity of something
- penguin resists the waves as it moves against the tide
- escaping to sand because sea is bad
An involuntary shouldering off of gleam.
- water is bouncing of the penguin and catching the light
- lost a sense of vitality
Hands push him back into the sea. He stands
- rescuers trying to usher him back into the see
- enjambment
In pained and silent expostulation.
- his life will never be the same
- can not convey the protest
- victim
Once he knew a sunlit, leaping smoothness,
- what his life was vs. now
- brighter before the oil spill quite literally
But close with his head’s small knoll, and dark,
- can not escape the idea of the oil
