Little penguins

March 17, 2026
4 hours

Low Head, Tasmania

 

Little penguins waddle-queueing

like white-pinafored payday shoppers

round-bellied bustling

from the fish market,

flippers hanging,

laden with unseen baskets,

seeming with their seawater-glossy backs

to be sweating with scurrying effort

on stubby legs and slippered feet,

pausing between scuttles to queue,

heads turning to one another

as though in conversation.

Penny Lane

After a teaching career in Hobart, Canberra and Sydney, during which she wrote two books about teaching, Penny Lane turned to writing short stories and, more recently, poetry, and has won several awards for both stories and poems. She was a finalist in the 2017 Newcastle Poetry Prize, won first and third prizes in the free verse section of the 2019-20 Sutherland Shire Literary Competition, and won the 2023 Cloncurry Prize. She has published a Kindle e-book, Winning Writing: What Works For Me, about her short story writing.

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