Saturday, July 28, 2012

Meaningful Relationship
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


The dew-dampened swallowtail
braves her first flight of the day,
heavy with night on her wings
but compelled to risk everything
for voices calling out to her to nectar
them into service.

We can’t do this alone,
this gifting of ourselves,

this making meaning of
our embodiment.

Everything is longing for you to give
it purpose through relationship.

Inhale plant.
Exhale animal.
Inhale plant.
Exhale animal…

The ochre-colored grasshopper
half-floating, half-sunk
in the water bucket
showered my hand with dainty kisses
when I lifted him, dripping,
and kept him company in the sun
until he could cast into the
grasses and strum.

Today, it was our task
to love each other.

Tomorrow, the birds will sing
for me as I leave them
an offering of striped
sunflower gratitude.

The toad will wink at me
with his left golden-orb
and puff his heavenly body
when I pass him on the
muddied trail,

saying, “Hello Handsome.”

There is no end to the possibilities
of what we could do for each other.

Sit with that for a spell.

~

 “How can I help?”

With these four words,
you can live
the meaning of life.

With these four words,

we can make a world.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Lavender


Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The bumble bees and I
are drawn to elongated
crowns of lavender flowers
on erect emerald stems.

Only in a world in which
souls can rub up against each other
could you find such creation –

enticing to all the senses.

Let me be here in the physical –

To feel,
to smell,
to see,
to hear,
to taste the knowable,
to intuit the Great Mystery.

Might these alluring blossoms
and these yielding insects
be evidence of our Godliness,

and that every living thing
is a mated aspect
of Heaven?

My body says, “yes.”


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in  "Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World" 
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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Finding My Way Home














Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


What I have learned:

If you cannot love yourself,
you cannot truly love this
world,
with its harsh passions
avowed to setting you free.

The fish on your plate
is a gift from the sea -
who asks for your
salty tears in return,

The air asks only to play
in your lungs,

The swift that you re-member
that you can fly.

I’ve walked barefoot in mud
in order to find my way
Home.

It’s the only way I know how
to reconcile my longing for
a Mother.

Choose to be.

In the end,

You were the only one really capable
of loving yourself
enough.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in "Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World" 

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Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Annual


















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


Your presence would
terrify me
if it weren’t my desire
to be destroyed.

I am like the flower
who yearns to drop my
petals so that I may
go to seed,
and bloom anew as
an entire meadow
perfuming the sky.

This self is a limited
concept –

It pushes hard against
my inner skin,
saying,
“Let me out!”

The tight-bodied seed
of me cracks open.

The unfurling sprout of me
rises through the soil,
wishing to speak only
in the plural.

This is how I live –
rooted and
reaching for the sun.

And this is why
I choose to die
an annual –

So that there is more
of me to give myself
to you.


© 2012-2014/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Re-Union: Coming Home to Each Other" (a work in progress)

(Feel free to share)