[Yves S L]

Hello Ralph,

General thoughts: So there are billions of humans and twelve months each with a totem bird that might be given personality traits. Now anything can spark a transformation, but if the poem was a movie, then the transformation based on the luck of which month you are born in would be, to me, a hard sell.

But hey ho that is my issue with premise, that the character change is not well "motivated". But my perspective might change on another day.

Thinking about it some more: it comes down to my feeling that the final two lines are too emphatically clark-kent-to-superman heroic, that a smaller transformation, maybe even some doubt would sell the transformation more:

he compares ideal heights with earthly flaws/not confident the eagle is his bird and so on.

There is no reason why a totem bird might not be a some kind Rorschach inkblot test, but can a Rorschach inkblot test spark a thorough polaric shift of life-long personality traits and described in so few lines? The poem seems to be a bit too easily set up.