The Solitary Adélie
- The Solitary Adélie
She peers into reticent waters near Hut Pointand if you've ever arranged an internet date
at a designated window in the Central Park Zooyou know what she wants. If you've taken your little girl
to the aquarium on Lake Michigan, ditto.Or found yourself on Cape Adare, solitary, too—
ditto. After all, she simply seeks awareness beneath that glaze!Would it be too much to hope for a squid this evening,
the first sunset still weeks ahead? Not at all.After which, I venture, an introvert could well attend
to the din of a thousand relations. [End Page 20]
Kimiko Hahn is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York. Author of eight poetry collections, she finds her material from disparate sources — whether exhumation (The Artist's Daughter, Norton, 2002), classical Japanese texts (The Narrow Road to the Interior, Norton, 2006), or rarefied fields of science (Toxic Flora, Norton, 2010). She is also collaborating on translations of Japanese zuihitsu. Recent awards include a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2011 Asian American Writers Workshop Award.
