Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Sustenance 

Australia. Phillip Island. The Tasman Sea.

Dusk. The craggy coastline at low tide in fog.

Two thousand tourists milling in the stands

as one by one, and then in groups, the fairy penguins

mass up on the sand like so much sea wrack and

debris. And then, as on command, the improbable

parade begins: all day they've been out fishing

for their chicks, and now, somehow, they find them

squawking in their burrows in the dunes, one by one,

two by two, such comical solemnity, as wobbling by

they catch our eager eyes until we're squawking, too,

in English, French, and Japanese, Yiddish and Swahili,

like some happy wedding party brought to tears   

by whatever in the ceremony repairs the rifts

between us. The rain stops. The fog lifts. Stars.

And we go home, less hungry, satisfied, to friends

and family, regurgitating all we've heard and seen.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Sustenance" from For A Limited Time Only, by Ronald Wallace, © 2008. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. The poem first appeared in Poetry Northwest, Vol. 41, no. 4, 2001. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.