Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Break Free















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

How we need to be free!

I watch the butterflies emerging from their chrysalises,
folded and fat-bodied with amazement,

“What are these?!”

and the damsels, stepping out of their cellophane-like 
exoskeletons like elegant ladies exiting a tattered 
carriage for a long anticipated gala.

In the soft-lined cups hidden within 
the rose and blackberry brambles,
naked little beaked-things are cracking 
their way out of perfect eggs
and finding their “feed me, World!” voice.

The bluebells have once again pushed through
the hard red clay and molding leaf litter
to make offerings of delightfully nodding flowers, which

bees newly emerged from comb cells visit for a spell.

While, at the pond, a bronze-colored froglet
walks onto dry land and experiments with hopping.

Do you know this kind of satisfaction –

The kind that can only come from whole-bodied emergence?

This, I believe, is what is impatiently awaiting you.

Spring, in every which way, is repeating two words:

Break. Free.

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

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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Finally, I Get It



















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I keep trying to speak eloquently
on behalf
of an eagle,

Pushing at words,

And failing,
miserably.

He says,

“Where there is power,
 
there is no
need
for force.”

© 2013/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (to be published by Hiraeth Press in June 2013; www.hiraethpress.com)

Monday, April 22, 2013

The Inheritance




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I open the door to the world every morning,
anticipating, wondering
who will be the first to greet me
as I step onto the earth with eyes still soft
from dreaming.

Will it be pine, or pine warbler?

Who will be beside me
when I kneel at the pond,
walk through the wood,
cross the meadow?

Will I notice them?

Will they notice me?

Never are my days lived alone.

Never are my breaths less than
an exchange of breaths with some
other soul.

Everything wants to be known.

So, for awhile each day, I tend to this
mutual desire for belonging,

Saying, “Hello pretty girl,” to the doe.
stroking the pussy willows.
meditating beside a frog.

This is how I apprentice to love, 
and learn to speak those forgotten words

that acknowledge every living thing
as a simple miracle.

When the day comes that my body
no longer needs to walk out the door
in order to know this fine world,  

I pray that some young person is
stepping across their threshold,

taking a deep breath in the morning air,
and realizing,

this is my inheritance.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems
In honor of Earth Day

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Owl















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

In the arc of my wings,
the amber of my eyes,
the lucid throttle of my talons,
I am built to hold you,

In sacred silence.

How do you choose
to hold
me?


(c) Jamie K. Reaser
From "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (to be published by Hiraeth Press in June 2013; www.hiraethpress.com)

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Rising




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Paddling upward through layers of sand
with no knowledge of where to,                                     
crazed, or mightily faithful,
I don’t know and I refuse to judge
these hundreds of tiny flippers
in a frenzy to meet the Great Mystery,
and possibly their death, imminently.
I prefer to crouch here in awe.
What they don’t know, I know:
Ghost crabs, raccoons, birds, big birds,
fish, big fish. They, many of these
little naïve ancient ones, will be snacked upon
like salted popcorn. Nab, swallow, and gone
from this world they barely entered
and could not name.
Look how they rush to their destiny,
risking everything because that’s
what it is to live, though, yes, that’s the terrible secret
that we keep shushing back into the underworld,
and look how they, bellies skidding, go forward to reach
the one world they are made for, and how,
like an equal lover, that world, that mighty crashing world,
is reaching back to them in waves. And, they are met.

Gasp.

Isn’t this what you want?
The perfect fit. The equal lover. 

These precious scrambling things have got it right.
Standing in the sea oat-waving dunes, I’m absolutely sure of it.

How can the body, this body, any body
refuse to take the risk to rise?


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

Photo taken in 1985 while working with the Caretta Research Project on Wassaw Island, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia - the morning I first observed the emergence of nestling loggerhead sea turtles. Unforgettable.

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