Imaginary Food For Imaginary Animals Poem by Denis Mair

IMAGINARY FOOD FOR IMAGINARY ANIMALS
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I wear the mask of an animal persona and dance in my imagination. I am fleetingly aware that the identity I inhabit is more fluid than I had supposed. I go into circulation with other presences that the Creator breathed into the landscape. I dimly sense those personae as stations dreamed along a journey that I can only know in parts. Animal personae are archetypes punctuating the possibility space of vertebrate body plans; they are sets of compatible features in the continuum of behavioral profiles; they are vessels chosen by the Cosmic Potter and thrown in the clay of consciousness.

What was the message of throwing life's vessel in the guise of a raven? A wolf? A beaver? A firefly? A gryphon? Why were so many kinds required? This is the kind of riddle that I feel called upon to answer during my life journey.

I was not born into a tribe where pride of clan is tied up with a shared totem. I will never know lifelong identification with any kind of animal familiar. If I recognize a special tie to any animal type, it is to a dog or cat or domesticated beast, but their wildness was long ago altered by proximity to humans.
Yet I take pride in my kind. I cannot swim or fly like the consummate inhabitants of land and water. My pride lies in the ability to borrow these masks and surmise the deep secrets in each. I imagine there is a kind of making beyond what human hands can make. I can change places with animals from time to time, but the planets and sun are beyond the masks that my face can aspire to fit into.

I truly believe that animal personae are important for thinking, as emblems for reflecting on how we sustain ourselves.What is the source of our richest internal rewards? Is it caregiving and closeness? Is it pouncing on an object of pursuit? Is it strategizing or rambunctious play? If food is a metaphor for serial rewards during engagement in tasks or immersion in 'sessions of sweet thought, ' then an animal persona is a mirror showing us how we fuel anticipation and claim those internal dopamine rewards.

Animal personae are not just concepts or vehicles for content. They help us sense our position in the 'great chain of being, ' which is why they are good for organic thinking. (This is why I like the poetry of Ted Hughes.) I hope youngsters who only encounter animals as cartoons in childhood will not experience confusion about placing themselves in the natural order.

I like to revisit memories of my grandson Amon at 1 and a 1/2 years old. He had tremendous interest in watching animal video clips with me. His eyes lit up with some kind of recognition, even though these animals were entering his visual universe for the first time. I think he must have been getting a dopamine reward from watching, just as I do from remembering.