Framed poster
This framed bald eagle poster is one of the ones that stay. John mates for life and always returns to the same place, so it arrives ready to hang and never move from the wall again. This is John, from Duluth, and he's part of Animal Kinhood.
Foto: Joshua J. Cotten / UnsplashHaliaeetus leucocephalus
I don't shout, I tune. I give half the city a voice and keep my own on the workbench, in a guitar I've spent years not finishing. Someday I'll play it for Carol.
Coasts, estuaries, large lakes, rivers and reservoirs across North America, from Alaska and Canada down to northern Mexico, always near open water rich in fish and with tall trees to nest in
John is one of those who stay. In his world you don't change partner or place: you choose once, young, and come back each season to the same nest, the same stretch of shore, to the end. Among his own, that's simply how things are done. That quiet loyalty doesn't show on his face — the face is a symbol's face, one of the imposing kind — but it's the firm ground everything else rests on. A man who doesn't let go of what he loves.
His place is Duluth, on the shore of Lake Superior, and from there he doesn't move. That's why the frame suits him so well: a portrait that already comes closed, ready to fix to the wall and leave there, like setting something in its place for good. Of all the characters in my Animal Kinhood series, John is one of the least likely to go anywhere. You hang it once and it stays: the fixed stare head-on, the white head, the same calm as always. A bald eagle poster for life, signed by Yago Partal.
