Friday, August 8, 2025

Amber


 

A friendship frozen in memory,

Drowned by resinous trauma,

Fossilized to golden crystal,

Agelessly preserved,

A yellowed relic of the past.

 

If only I could strip away

The ossified layers,

The friend within might

Re-emerge, hale and whole,

Ready to renew our time together.

 

 

© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III

Dreaming and Dying

 

When I was young, I focused

More on my companions

Than on my calling.

 

Older now, I fixate

More on that calling

Than those companions.

 

At each point, I thought

the one more important

Than the other.

 

At each point,

I was wrong.

 

Now, my life runs backwards,

Reassembled in the wrong order

For the wrong reasons.

 

Like a mirror, once broken

The past can be rearranged

But never fully restored.

 

Deep cracks remain,

Shattering the image

Of who I thought I was,

 

Of who I thought

I would be.

 

Afraid to wake,

Afraid to sleep,

I will never rest comfortably

In that frame again.

 

 

© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III


Signs and Spirit Animals

 

I was born beneath the stars

Of Pisces. When I was young,

I swam like a fish underwater.

But before I crawled ashore,

I lost my twin in the stormy sea 

Of our mother’s womb,

Which may be why I

Can no longer drink like one.

 

My family gave us each a spirit animal,

Mostly for convenience at Christmas.

My grandmother’s was an elephant,

My mother’s a whale,

My cousin’s an owl.

If we didn’t choose,

One would be assigned.

I eventually received a wolf.

 

Years later, I was admonished

By a prospective girlfriend

To drop the lone wolf attitude.

That made me smile. Or maybe

It’s just my nature to bare my teeth.

Besides, if I had two wolves within me,

They wouldn’t fight;

They’d form a pack.

 

Earlier, my family had tried to give me a dragon,

But my dragons are fierce, not cute like theirs.

Later I returned to that mythological beast

As my screen name on a Taoist forum.

As Chinese luck would have it, the year

Of my birth is their Green Wood Dragon.

Which resonated like a personal koan:

Who would craft a dragon from green wood?

 

But were I to stain my skin with signs or spirit animals,

On one shoulder would perch a griffin rampant,

The heraldic symbol of my line and my brand,

On the other, a simple house cat

Gazing skyward in shadowed profile,

Felicia, Nyala, Smoke or Samarra,

Any of Bast’s Chosen I’ve been honored

To serve in the temple where I rent space.

 

I’ve always longed to be marked by something special,

Some tribe, some clan, some band of brotherhood.

Instead, I am destined to die alone and unadorned,

An imperfectly heard chord in this life’s ballad.

 

 

© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III