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
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
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
