Black and white photograph of a large tribal-style eagle tattoo with spread wings across a person's upper back and shoulder blade, with the head turned away from the camera.

Eagle tattoo across a shoulder blade

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a large eagle with spread wings tattooed across the upper back and shoulder blade. The bold black linework uses formline-style shapes, with segmented feathers, eye motifs and a hooked beak, and the solid black areas contrast strongly with the pale skin. The dark background and soft natural light focus attention on the tattoo, while the subject's head is turned away from the camera.

Back Shoulder Eagle Bird Wing Feather Claw Beak

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had told the boy twice that the eye was the last thing you cut, and twice he had brought her the plank with the eye still blank, as if it were a stain he hoped she would overlook. Tom was seventeen and quick with a chisel, quicker than she had been at his age, but he wanted the finished thing before he had earned the start of it. She set the adze down on the bench and wiped her hands on her apron.

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"My teacher made me sand a panel for two winters before he let me near the eye," she said. "He said an eagle's eye is where the carver stops hiding."

Tom looked at the formline feathers, every segment squared and balanced, and said nothing. He had a ferry fare to save and a mother whose boat needed a new engine, and none of that had anything to do with feathers.

That night the wind turned hard out of the west and the Marigold did not come in. Ruth sat by the stove with her coat still on, listening to the shingle drag under each wave. Tom was gone before she noticed, and the lantern was gone from its hook. When she went to the shed she found him at the bench with the plank held down under one knee, cutting the eye by lamplight, his breath coming in short white bursts.

Morning brought the Marigold round the point with a torn sail and two grinning men. Ruth walked down the slipway, past the nets and the gulls, and put her thumb to the eye on the panel Tom had carried down under his arm. It was crooked in one corner and wholly alive, and it was looking straight out to sea.