The Vittles of Death

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The broad-winged hawk

raised from the rocky creek bed

with a time-limited garter snake

in her talons.

I knew the bird by the

horizontal white tail barring

and the rapid flap of wing

as she rose toward the emerging canopy veil.

I knew the snake by the

vertical yellow stripes

running the length of body to tail.

They gleamed in the sunlight

stored up by the poplar leaves

for cloudy days

such as this.

What of him was not twisted

and entwined in a mutual

death grip with scaly hawk feet

streamed downward –

though in mid air,

gravity still laying a claim

saying,

“You will return to me.”

Perhaps all of us knew gravity

wasn’t expecting to see that snake

again in the same configuration

of embodiment.

Most of us were okay with it,

under the circumstances.

So bird and snake got me thinking

about how we living beings

must feed our inner beloved

on the vittles of Death.

Love notes take many forms:

Here my Beloved are the cords of attachment

to beliefs proven too small and inflexible,

to things that constrict and clutter,

and to all those who can only embrace us

in pathologies of pain.

Here too I lay down all of the possessions

that ego has acquired through the depletion

of Self and Other.

There are many.

Let me nourish you my Dearest,

tending cellular breath and memory,

on the flesh of animal and plant.

Though I’d like to promise you that every

being came to our lips by choice,

I don’t know this to be true.

Our gratitude needs be far greater than

Grandmother’s mourning.

I kept walking,

knowing somewhere beyond my sight

the extended arm of a large tree on mountain slope

was hosting hawk and serpent

at the shared breakfast table of Gain and Loss.

But before this story was completely over,

I came upon another common garter snake -

this one warming belly in the middle of a winding gravel road.

His tongue flicked in and out,

tasting, sensing.

I said,

“Hello Love,”

and gently moved him out of harm’s way.

© 2011-2016/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" 
and "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems"
(www.hiraethpress.com)


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