Friday, August 8, 2025

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

2 comments:

  1. --------------------------------
    Notes and asides:
    --------------------------------

    I’m not sure why I started thinking about this one. I’m not thinking about getting tattoos, though I understand their appeal to many. I think most of it comes from how we like to categorize our lives into the roles we play or serve, or portions of our personality, which in ancient times were sometimes seen as signs and spirit animals. The way we will be seen, heard, and remembered.

    True story, I really did have a twin, at least as my mother told it. More likely, given that my grandmother came down and returned home because I was born two months late, my mother had sequential pregnancies and didn’t realize she’d spontaneously miscarried between them. But I think about that twin sometimes and how my life might have been different had s/he been here beside me.

    There is a supposedly Native American legend, perhaps Cherokee, that we each have two wolves battling within us. Some variants claim they represent good and evil. The one that wins is the one you feed. Well, that’s not how wolves work. Alone, they are much less dangerous hunters than together. Communication and coordination are the key, both of which are in my nature. I just never found my pack.

    The last lines of the fifth stanza come from my official writing bio, "a servant to Bast’s Chosen in the temple where he rents space". I think it confuses people, but it does capture that part of my life pretty well.

    The last stanza came to me very late as I struggled to find the right ending. The fifth stanza didn’t seem quite right. The phrase “imperfectly heard chord” came to me long before in a fugue state while I listened to music through headphones. I didn’t think I’d use it here, but it fit.

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  2. Of the five figures in this illustration, only one exited before I started, The Griffin in the middle is the Noddfa Imaginings Griffin, updated a little to match the other four. Inspiration for the other four mostly came from looking at tattoo designs, which often have bold lines and strong representations. The cat profile is of Mara, whom we lost a few years ago. The knot work, which I always have fun doing, was also based on designs I found and modified. The idea for a blue tint to the background came from Edward. Each figure has pass-throughs that better define the shapes by allowing the background to peek through them, and each has a white eye. I tried to match the amount of negative space in each figure, so that they all felt equally weighted and balanced, and to portray the spirit of the animals, and the poem.

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