Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Last Full Moon















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

She beckoned me
to come to her
in silence.

She was radiant, glowing
and I was eager to lap at
her with a poet’s tongue.

But, no.

There was something else.

Something that reminded me of
my grandmother,

Pale and cold-bodied,
lying there,
dead,
in a viewing coffin

in a room frenetic with
stillness.

It took only seconds to realize:

Air thick with the essence
of ‘Goodbye’ ~

Ahh. Yes.

And then I knew:

She, as we have known Her,
was leaving us.

In This Time,
she would be the last 

full moon.

There is a reverence for Elders
that can split a heart open
when it arrives
from the humble depths
of soul.

Oh how I felt it,
and am feeling it still.

Silence.

It’s for everything ~

Everything,
 
that is too important to say.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Swerving to Miss Caterpillars
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

In the Autumn,
when thirteen-segments,
fat and bristled,
dare the frenetic roads to find
tall, dry grasses in which to sleep
themselves into something
utterly different,

caterpillars can be your prayer.

What kind of person do you
choose to be?

Every moment of every day
you have this question put before
you by everything around you.

Everything.

And, everyone.

In that instant in which you wake up,
how will
you emerge?

Driving down Route 33,

at this very moment,

I make my choice:

I choose to be the kind of person
who swerves to miss caterpillars.


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

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Eclipsing













Image: origin unknown

“Wear no one’s shadow,”
said the Sun,
throwing off the dark
night of the day.

The light you most seek
must be your own,
not a celestial arriving
or re-incarnation of stories
that have outgrown
their telling-time -

These are Earth bound only
to re-mind you of
your own forgotten power
of illumination.

Here.

Here in your vulnerability.
Here in your broken-heartedness.
Here is where you should
Look.

Everything that has ever cracked
you open has served its purpose.

All light wants to get out into the world.

When I watch you,

I cannot help but wonder
if the sorrow residing behind 
your water-pooled eyes isn't the
cry for help from the grieving torch 
that you hid 
under a belly-scorched bushel 
long ago.

You must end this eclipsing of Self.

When?

When will it be alright for you to shine?

I cannot help but think
that the time

is now.


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

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Monday, November 5, 2012

The Quiet

    





















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I am inspired by the quiet.
Not the silence that would indicate
that I have gone far away from
here and forsaken the meaning
of my life,

but the quiet that comes into a place
like a soft-landing owl;
the quiet that says
everyone and everything is present,
and they are listening.

It’s a quietude that
is too often reserved
for the thresholds of life
and death,

when the spirits are busily
re-minding us of
our emotions,

and testing our concepts
of right
and wrong.

In this world,

How generous we can be with life
when we stop needing to be the
mockingbird on the post
morning,
noon,
and under the nauseating yellow glow
of dingy street light.

There are days when voices
should be reserved for
speaking nothing more than,
“Yes,”

And only in response to
the questions
that no one dared
ask.


© 2012-2020/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Sunday, November 4, 2012

To Know This World



















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

To know this world
is to surrender to the hostile forces
of Love –

The ones that leave you naked
and struggling with your anonymity
in the face of everything that
has recognized your magnificence.

I say this not out of experience,
but out of faith in that which
is determined to bring us alive
even as we make grand investments
in our reluctance
to live.

What can a day be for
but to
open the eyes?

When you love yourSelf
enough,

Even this is possible.


© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser