Griffin

Events settle within me like silt in cloudy water: stillness eventually reveals clarity. Waiting for the port to open, I survey our camp in the quietude of morning.

Through the mist many banners are obscured by distance. Others are withdrawn, allowing us peace while their owners wrestle with private shadows of this conflict. A few remain close and visible in the gray half-light: a coiled dragon, always welcome; a buffalo and crossed hammers beneath which several tents cluster; two bright, pink pennons looped atop banner-staves, signs of solidarity in sorority.

Above me hangs the most familiar banner, my banner, adopted as her own, a black griffin rampant on a field of gold. Half eagle, half lion, all razor talons, claws and beak, a fierce ally were hers a strictly a mythic fight. In the pre-dawn silence it is difficult not to become superstitious, attempting to read meaning into random events to make sense of the cold, sometimes cruel, pattern to this life. At times for solace, we are reduced to seeking omens, divinations of the direction this struggle might take, holding onto them like lovers in the night. By day, we scour the sky for talismans, raptors, her touchstone in difficult times. They favor us on every journey.

Mornings, osprey line light poles like soldiers at attention awaiting her review, or like sentinels guarding the causeway home. As we enter the bastion of a lab, one slews above its canopied entrance then drifts around a corner out of sight, its cries for a mate still piercing the sky.

Evenings, we catch the brown and amber hues of hawks, red-tails, red-shouldered, others whose names only she can recite. Some larger, some smaller, all are restless, lighting upon a wire only a moment before taking wing again, transient, migratory blessings.

At noon occasionally eagles glide the air, white heads and tails flashing, eyes hunting, their mere presence driving lesser birds from their demesne. They lend her their bold nobility, their strength and vigilance, signs that give her hope.

Another bird seems drawn to her as well. Crows follow, collecting like unpenitent Black Friars, gossiping like Poor Clares fallen from their vows, haunting our trees then darkening our skies with their laughter. In numbers they pay little heed to raptors, harassing hawks and osprey, even the lone eagle for sport. Tricksters of the Americas rather than their European counterparts presaging death or defeat, they point to our folly of setting a future in our minds and naming it a birthright, cackling at our outrage when life's pattern intervenes.

In the past weeks, both our hero's wings have been clipped. Once healed, she will rise again to flight, scattering their mocking murder like the mythic beast fluttering on her banner overhead.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III