Sunday, December 31, 2017

In the Balance















Art: Mark Collins
http://markcollinsfineart.com/


This Autumn afternoon
the young hawk
took himself into the air
arising from some secret in the old orchard
and banking toward the blue-hued mountains
to station in one of the far-reaching red oaks
that the farmer let live for want of
cattle-shade. Black angus. Not very
imaginative. The hawk: I thought of poetry,
of Gary Snyder up in a fire
tower scribing masterpieces
on simplicity and balance.
Then, as if it was meant to demonstrate how
quickly a lovely thought can shapeshift into some
harsh reality, the squirrel arrived and that, was
that: not well-practiced but honed by necessity,
it cut across the distance. Woosh!
I said to myself: “Look at the way he loves. Look
at the way he serves Heaven. Look how he
learns who he is.” There was nothing to disdain.
Nothing to grieve. There was an impaled
squirrel there—thick with the season—twitching in
the grass and a hawk mantling his prey just
like a voice that I couldn’t hear told him
to do. In his golden eyes, I saw the low yellow
sun and the yellow flowers that friends
give each other when red means too much.
I remembered other things that had seemed
like something until suddenly things changed.
There was some grief in that, and some joy too. And,
this is where I was with my thoughts when he arose
with the squirrel and went off, pulsing, somewhere
into the wood where he could tear a life
apart in private. I became the poet.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Installment for collaborative book project and show with artist Mark Collins
Work in progress

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Sunday, December 24, 2017

Awaiting Santa




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


Have you ever stopped awaiting Santa, that proof that
something magical exists and that it knows you? Isn’t
there something that every little boy and girl wants
that only Santa can bring, like being fully witnessed by
another? Feed the holy say the scriptures, somewhere.
Cookies, milk, carrots: maybe they are enough of an
offering to nourish the spirit in a world that insists
we stop believing.


I don’t have a mantel. But, I can make do. 


(c) 2017/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

Monday, December 4, 2017

A Holiday Miracle Comes Full Circle


Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


When you are self-employed, amassing tax deductions is as important as taking out the garbage. So, there I was on December 6th with a car load of donations, the last drop offs of the year. Yeah. Habitat for Humanity was to benefit from a water heater and grotesquely golden-yellow toilet pulled from my sister’s new home, as well as an aging stereo and slide scanner that had surpassed my technological capacities for repair - a gesture that sounds rather like “ker thump.” Goodwill was to receive yet another bag of waist-too-large clothing.  I had my personal trainer, Leon, to thank for that. 


I first paid my respects to Habitat for Humanity.

That accomplished, I began to fidget, repeatedly, with the turquoise turtle-neck sleeve that covered my turquoise-banded watch.  It had snowed two days earlier and I had been forced to take the long way into town; a cross-wise car blocked my closest access route to the highway. That hill should never be attempted in bad weather with a two-wheel-drive vehicle.  All the locals know that.  I had things to do. Year-end deadlines for various environmental consultancies. Holiday cookies to bake. Goats to tend before dark.

Drats. The loading dock was already occupied by soccer-moms, as well as a soccer-dad (impressive), busily tossing engorged black garbage bags of out-grown toys and clothing at blue-vested volunteers.  I’d have to park across the lot and walk 100 feet or so.  I did.

“Would you like a receipt?” one cheerful worker chimed to the soccer-types. “No,” they chorused in unison, barely taking the time to inhale and exhale the reply amidst tales of their children’s recent accomplishments. Oh yes, and the gossip about the not-so-accomplished things other people’s kids were doing.  I sneered. Either they don’t have to work or they had real jobs. 

“Would you like a receipt?” she turned towards me. “Yes, please,” I muttered.  I filled it out. “The white copy is yours.”  I knew the routine.

Back to the car, I thought.  Things to do.  I’m behind schedule. (Whose I’m not sure).
“Go inside. Look around.”  Clear, concise, and pushy. The voiced caused me pause.  I knew that voice well and knew that it had served me well, repeatedly, throughout my life - in big ways and small.

“Go inside. Look around.”  I stood on the asphalt, a yard or so from the car door, keys ready, yet looking at the store entrance. “Open,” it read.

“Go inside and look around.” Then the inner-arguments began.  I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t need any more “stuff” of any sort in my tiny, under-renovation cabin. I had things to do. I slid the turquoise sleeve elbow-ward again.

“But,” said another part of me, “remember the lottery ticket.”  The lottery ticket?  Yes. I remembered the lottery ticket.  Earlier in the year the same voice had haunted me in a 7-Eleven.

My dream house had been without water for nearly two weeks and the dirty clothes had taken on a life of their own. I drove into town, picked a laundromat, hogged more than my fair share of machines, and wandered across the street to 7-Eleven for some green tea.  As soon as I entered the store, the voice began nagging, “Buy a lottery ticket. The tiki one.” I had never before bought a lottery ticket and wasn’t inclined to do so. What a waste of money.

But there I was, standing in front of the lottery ticket machine. Huh, there is one with a tiki on it, I noted. I bought it (two bucks), scratched it, and figured I didn’t know a damn thing about playing the lottery because by my calculations I had won $100.  I took it up to the woman behind the counter and handed it over without a word. I figured she’d either tell me how much it was worth or ask if I wanted her to throw it out. To my great surprise, she offered her congratulations and placed five twenties in my hand.

Yes. I remembered the lottery ticket.

“Go inside. Look around.”  Oh, fine.

I climbed the steps, entered the door, and walked past the cashiers while at least two parts of me still bickered. OK. Now what?  My attention was drawn to the back of the store - housewares.

I made my way past rack after rack of suits, dresses, and tops. Then bins of infant clothes, scarves, teddy bears, and baseball caps.  Housewares. I walked down one aisle - jars, glasses, mugs, vases, the occasional basket and plate. Around the corner and back again, down the other side.  Christmas-motif jars, glasses, mugs, and the occasional…

I could walk no further. I had been halted against my own volition. A chill streamed into my body and neck-hairs raised as best they could within the confines of a turtle-neck collar. Disoriented, fuzzy-visioned eyes fell, gazing onto the second shelf from the bottom. I forgot to breathe.

There lay a wreath, a Christmas wreath, which I knew personally. My lungs remembered the importance of breathing and forced a gasp.

I reached to take it into my hands. Could I? Was it real?

It was. I felt the straw-interior base, the fiber-fill stuffing, the swatches of multi-colored print fabric, the long red bow.  I rubbed my fingers over the hook, crocheted out of red synthetic yarn.

Some of the patches, mostly the blue ones, were sun-faded.  It had been well-used. That was a good thing.

I turned it over. No price tag. No matter.

I looped my left arm through it, held it tight, and bee-lined for the register. I was going to make sure to get it and get out fast. No one else was going to end up with this wreath this holiday season.

I handed it to the sales lady. She worked there often. I always enjoyed her cheery air, bright eyes, and warm, rounded face. I had yet to figure out her hair, however. It didn’t move. Hair spray?

She flipped the wreath over. “No price tag,” I remarked.

“Two dollars and thirty-five cents,” she concluded.

I was gonna burst.

“Do you want to know the story of that wreath?” I begged, smiling beyond my usual capacity to do so.

“Sure. Of course I do,” she obliged with a glint and a grin, just as I knew she would.

The lady who had been in front of me in line was heading toward the door. The mid-length coat she wore was smartly-shaped. Two other patrons with much laden arms cued at my flank. I was sure they weren’t amused by my efforts to garner conversation.

“My mother made that wreath,” I blurted. “She’s been dead for nearly thirteen years.”

The exist-bound lady halted and turned. 

The sales woman shouted to her. “Did you hear that?!”

“My mother made that wreath. She’s been dead for nearly thirteen years,” I repeated, as much for the benefit of my cranial analysis as anyone else’s.

“Oh my golly. Oh my golly. How wonderful!” bounced the cashier.

“I know each of these patches of fabric,” I added. “There’s Christmas stockings, that’s Easter bonnets…”

The two behind me stared. I could see them from the corner of my eye. Were they in awe, entranced? Or, did they have things to do and greatly wish me gone?

“I feel like I shouldn’t charge you for it - just give it to you!” The lady at the register declared, nodding rapidly, not a hair straying.

“No,” I said. “Please take the money.” 

I can’t remember how I got out of the store.

But then I was heading down the steps and into the parking lot.  The tailored-coat lady kept repeating, “That’s so wonderful. That’s so wonderful,” as she made her way to her car.

“Something told me to go inside and look around,” I said.  “I didn’t want to, but something clearly told me to.”

“Something?” She looked directly at me, her voice begging - no demanding - the correct answer.  “That Something was the Lord. The Lord told you to go in there and find it!”  Her voice was deep, bold, and inspired, yet melodic. I pictured her as the leader of a rightfully-proud Gospel choir.

“You’re right,” I replied. The Great Spirit by any name, book, or declaration was fine with me on such an occasion.

I gave the passenger seat over to the wreath while driving the long way home.  Occasionally I reached over and stroked it, letting the edges of the wide ribbon guide my fingers around the loops and tails.  In my mind’s eye, I saw her at her old Singer sewing machine. The stitches were flawless.  Anything craft-wise she could do.

It had to be at least fifteen years old.  At least.  Cancer had stolen her energy away from such things, especially in the last years of the struggle. Especially after the failed bone-marrow transplant.

I had placed an amaryllis bulb in a red, tin pot in my southern-most window. It was going to serve as my single holiday decoration, whether or not it ever flowered. There were so many chores on the to-do list and I was braving the winter by living within a short distance of a wood burning stove, my only heat source in way-too-drafty abode. 

A Christmas tree just wasn’t going to happen.

I hung the wreath over the right-hand end post of my four-poster bed.  I touched it again, and looked at the crocheted hook. It really was real.

Two holiday decorations.

I sat at my desk, planning to get back to the work deadlines.  Instead, I stared at the wreath, feeling her presence ever more strongly with every memory that flooded back to me.  I soaked in it.  I had all the time in the world.

It occurred to me that I had been thinking about Mom quite a bit lately.
And that’s when I fully realized it.

In just a few days, my eyes would open to the soft December morning light. The first thing they would see, hanging at the end of my bed, would be that multi-colored, partially faded, patchwork wreath.  It would be my fortieth birthday.

I called my little sister.  “Guess what. I got my birthday present from Mom a bit early.”

After a brief silence, she replied, somewhat nervously, “What? What are you talking about?”

I told her the story.

“I’m gonna cry,” she concluded.

Thanks Mom. I love it.

I love you.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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The Long Nights Moon
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


Tell me one more time, what is it that
makes you restless? The long nights moon
has arrived and darkness settled in for awhile.
This is the season for dreaming.

It used to be that I could count stars with
my eyes solidly shut. I knew the pitched sky
from the inside out. Night was peace.
Night was solitude.

Things changed. I lost sight of tranquility.
This truth-challenged world took possession
of the awake, of my awakened heart.

Tell me one more time, what is it that
makes you restless? The long nights moon
has arrived and darkness settled in for awhile.
This is the season of longing.

I find myself in constant motion, trying to get
to some place that is safe for all of us. Some place
that I can invite you to. Some place that my
heart can rest.

I still believe in dreams. I still believe that we can
turn possibilities into something. I still believe
that there is a place that we can be together.
Awake or asleep, safe.

Tell me one more time, what is it that
makes you restless? The long nights moon
has arrived and darkness settled in for awhile.
This is the season for dreamers.

This is the season for dreamers.



© 2017-2019/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Monday, November 20, 2017

Bittersweet
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


The bittersweet vines hung there, in the trees,
by the dusk-cast river, orange berries bursting
from papered-sheaths.

I understood bittersweet.

You?

~

Sometimes we walk in circular paths that
make what is new seem so familiar,
sometimes, because it is.

This is our challenge: to distinguish reality
from mystery while never choosing
reality over the other.

You know what it is like when something
that lived a certain destiny becomes something
else entirely because it was loved in
a certain way.

That’s the nature of all things. Or, it could be.

~

When the sun set, I knew that it was still there,
on the trees, but I walked away anyway.

Bittersweet remains.

There is a dear, dear sweetness in that.



~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Plant Songs" (a work in progress)

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Saturday, November 4, 2017

Faith
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


I wondered if the katydid sitting atop the zinnia
knew that this will be its last day. Autumn cares
something about beauty, but she’s not one to
get attached to things, never to moments.

My garden is telling stories about what has been.
If you listen closely, you’ll notice that they are
stories about faith. That’s what seed planting
is: a practice of faith. That’s different than a
practice of promise, mind you. Pay attention
to that.

What will the waxwings do for full bellies
this winter? They are at the frost-softened
persimmons and those wild grapes high in the
red maple much earlier than usual. Is it
wisdom or foolishness that has them there?

Ah. Now that’s a question, isn’t it?



~ /Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Wonderment" (a work in progress)

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Saturday, October 14, 2017

Winterberry




















(c) Jamie K. Reaser

Her generosity sets in just as the sun becomes limited
in his givings. “Beauty can persist through seasons
of scarcity,” she says. I’ve been learning to listen to
this voice, learning to see what is ever-present.
Memories can be explored in this way. Sometimes,
that changes things.



~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Plant Songs" (a work in progress)

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Monday, October 9, 2017

Moon Poem
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I’m waiting for the moon, impatiently. She 
was swallowed by a cloud dragon who has
not yet given her back to the night sky. I want
to say that this is unfair, especially when she
is full, in her splendor, something that I want
to see so that the world feels right again.

Have you ever waited for things? Precious
things? In that longing is everything that
could save us all.



© 2017/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Saturday, September 2, 2017

Henry




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


“Who is he?” asked the beagle as Henry
stepped out of the car.

Henry, he said. He’s had a hard life
and he’s going to stay with us for awhile.

“Is he nice?” The beagle asked. “He’s kinda
funny looking. I’m cute. He’s simultaneously
handsome and ugly. How is that possible?”

Yes. He’s different. Different can be special.
Good special. Please, be polite and say hello.

“Hello, Henry. That food bowl is mine. And,
that muddy place under the porch is mine too. ”

Henry: I smell cats!

The beagle: (to the man) “He’s easily
distracted, isn’t he?”

Henry thrust himself into the shrubs
and grabbed a stick.

The beagle put her nose to the ground and
started walking the fenceline, “I think he should
go back to that place.”

Give him a chance. We all need a chance. Maybe
you can teach him something. You’ve been loved
all your life. He needs to learn to be loved.

The beagle looked up, raising her nose into the
air, trying to make it seem like she’d just caught
a scent. It was really an idea. She had an idea
about Henry.

Time passed. Henry learned to focus, not quite like
a beagle can focus, but something like that. Henry
learned to be loved. Like the beagle and the man
love each other.

Then the man said, it’s time for Henry to go. He
can have his own person now, someone who can
love just him.

“I want to help,” said the beagle. “I can tell his story.”

“He’s different. Different can be special.”

You can love different.



~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Conversations with Mary: Words of Attention and Devotion"
Winner of the Nautilus Book Award silver medal for poetry.

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The Spider
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


I can’t say for sure what artist brought it into this world,
eight legs and beauty on its mind. I did not fare as well
in Geometry, I’ll admit. There is a reverence, an awe for
the magic it spins and then weaves in the night, mooned
or pitch. It pains me so to encounter it first thing
on a trail, feeling it thick and sticky across my face before
my eyes adjusted to the wild. To destroy a Master’s
work: how do we do this and yet keep going?


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Truth and Beauty: Poems on the Nature of Our Humanity"

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Friday, August 25, 2017

This Day




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I know Death’s footfalls, and what a chicken sounds like
when Death arrives upon the roof of the coop, and
descends, and rises again: accompanying two beings at
the threshold of the worlds.

This is how this day broke away from the night. Death
was there and nearly gone before I arrived, but I saw
the last of Life still embodied in one, so determined
to continue in the other, and Death, fully occupying the
small space between them: the neutral mediator.

It was like the dream that I had just left behind in which
something had to go so that something else could boldly
make its way into the world.

©2017/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty"
To be published by Talking Waters Press


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Friday, July 14, 2017

The Deer
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


I know what it is to be hunted,
to be the thing that someone wants to destroy
because it will make them feel better about themselves.

I’m not sure how I learned to be this thing,
this thing that is okay with that. I’m not a martyr.

I am an offering.

My challenge is to make peace with
never knowing
what for.



© 2017-2019/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Saturday, July 1, 2017

Berries




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

A container full of berries
is a measure of time
and effort,

and something
else that escapes the
lid and is the sweetest.
I could say more, yes,

but I want you to
find out for yourself
how summer frees

things. It can be hard
to remember.



~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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Saturday, May 27, 2017

Freyda's Poem




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


She was walking along the country road,
plodding with sullen eyes that, upon my
arrival, lifted, somewhat, and asked:

“Is this more pain coming?”

And, daringly:

“Could it be hope?”

My open palm offered her the kibble
that I keep on hand, in a jar in the truck,
for just these moments. They are often
enough. She took it into her jutting ribs,
and then went for the pile I put on the
passenger seat. That was my hope.

That’s how our story started.

~

There’s some part of me that understands
the texture of abandonment better than
most things. I could tell you stories, but
I can’t explain it to you. It’s one of those
tangible mysteries that defines us.

We are the legacy of the dispossessed.
~

What makes a being disposable?

I wonder about this when I pick a dog up
on a winding country road, although, sometimes,
it is a cat, or several. And, too, there are the
men with cardboard signs on the street corners,
all having written imploring words with a thick
black sharpie.

Once, it was two young women. We talked.
They had abandoned themselves. They said:

“It is less painful this way.”


~

Rumi wrote to his beloved that:

I want to see you.

Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come ‘round the corner.

And, then went on to add:

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more.”

What is the opposite of abandonment?

Is it this?

~

I decided to call her, Freyda.

It means, joy.

~

I think:

If we want to know joy,
we can find our way home.

Anyway, that’s my hope.



~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Truth and Beauty: Poems on the Nature of Our Humanity"

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Saturday, May 20, 2017

I'll Trade Places with You














Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The blind man entered the metro car.

“Are there any empty seats?”

“No,” said the man sitting next to me,
in front of the sign that reads:

Priority Seating. Federal Law Requires
that These Seats Be Available to
Passengers with Disabilities and to
the Elderly.

Quizzically, again,

“There are no empty seats?”

“No. There aren’t any empty seats.”

He didn’t even glance up from his phone.
Didn’t look him in the eye.

Arising from my seat, the words came,

“Here. I’ll trade places with you. A little
to the left. Okay. There.”

I’ll trade places with you.

I stood, gripping the metal post, my
sight coming to rest on the clearance badge
around the neck of the face-to-phone
man.

Veterans Affairs.

Veterans Affairs?

Really?!

I couldn’t work my way to anger,
couldn’t get to a place where I could
speak my mind,

grief for this world arose so thick,
it was disabling.

I’ll trade places with you.

When did they stop teaching kids the
game in which they try to walk in
each other’s shoes?

I remember it. I had the biggest feet.

~

I don’t know where we are going.

There’s a part of me that wants to get off.

But, I am still standing here, holding on.

~

The blind man wouldn’t give up his seat.



~ /Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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