we know emperor penguins mate for a season, spawn, repeat with another partner next time around and never look back at what was with whom it was because, because, because of the singular focus at hand as both arch and bow as one as their instinctive bond doth command a commitment to memory unto bone and sinew through downy fir upon layered blubber, having survived the summer’s grazing under thinning sheets and menacing predators, and as the couple they are for the rearing of another half-clone of each, the call, the scream, the cackle, the chortle for which no human has a word that means the sound they make, distinguishable to each and to each only (until the fruit of their egg hatches into the din of its parent’s welcome) like a laser scanning (but not a laser because that’s visual) for the one-and-only barcode for which it abandons, indeed ignores all others in the huddled mass they join through darkest winter, mother and father, taking turns, sharing the responsibility of incubation until the happy reunion should will of Darwin allow as per the signal we’ve discussed, you know, the call of calls, the only one that matters, the one of the other, that is like no other, that of the partner of the moment, the moment being the here and now as much as their mutual identification results from a hear and now, the remarkable nature of which cannot be overstated no matter how loud the cry of one toward the other, yes, the penguin knows its partner to mission’s end