This is a poem by Amy Tan from her book The Joy Luck Club. It always makes me smile:

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought
many years ago in Shangai for a foolish sum.
This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck
that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose.
And now look! It is too beautiful to eat.

Then the women and the swan sailed across an ocean
many thousands of li wide,
stretching their necks toward America.
On her journey she cooed to the swan:
"In America, I will have a daughter just like me.
But over there, nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband's belch.
Over there, nobody will look down on her,
because I will make her speak only perfect American English.
And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow.
She will know my meaning because I will give her this swan
- a creature that became more than what was hoped for."

But when she arrived in the new country,
the immigration officials pulled the swan away from her,
leaving the woman fluttering her arms
and with only one swan feather for a memory.
And then she had to fill out so many forms
she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

Now the woman was old.
And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English
and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow.
For a long time now
the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather
and tell her, "This feather may look worthless,
but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions."
And she waited, year after year, for the day
she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.