Photo: Jamie K. Reaser
The morning light as it peeks in from the East,
finding me still snuggled under a duvet of
owl-winged dreams,
whispers with a lisp of hopeful eroticism,
“Are you awake?”
The barking dog beckoning as the day takes hold,
“Come, come! I have something to show you!”
And I rise, pulling on aged moccasins
and little more, following her up a rain-slick
mountain slope, brushing past ferns and
taking the piercing of brambles as love nips,
until we reach the erect trunk of an old cedar tree,
and up there I see two large raccoons
making love.
The wind choreographing the boxwood boughs at
the perimeter of the old homestead chimney,
nimble enough to remember who planted them
and why he felt so drawn to keep the
company of evergreen shrubs.
His longing for relationship grows here like an
ever-deepening caress upon the land,
like a caress upon the body.
I am touched by his handiwork, daily,
though we’ve never met
and chances are good that She’s long since
welcomed a man like that
into Her.
The ultisol soils that occupy the garden bed
and the underlayment of my nails
on the very best of days.
Hundreds of thousands of years in the making
and molding, clay from the bodies of
the requisite dead,
feeds me each time I bring a piece
of dark, curly-leafed kale to my pale lips.
Washing is such a complex act:
It requires you to decide between lovers –
water or dirt.
Sometimes I want to let them both take hold.
You,
You permitting me to see what remains wild
in your eyes, what you have refused
to give away to the hungry forces that would
domesticate your soul and talk of it
as a conceptual framework for corporate
earnings.
Oh and me,
Me surrendering to the wet touch
of this one glistening, salty tear
as it glides over my sun-danced cheek
and drops
into the abyss of neither
here nor there –
an offering of reciprocity for
the intimate communion
that awakens me.
© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser
Published in "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in
Everyday Life" (www.hiraethpress.com)
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