Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Call from the Kalahari

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


Sometimes, we have to make ourselves known,
to perch high enough to be able to chant our
prayers out across open terrain because
to be silent in the scrub would be
to defy something bold and invisible.

I’ve watched birds do this, and other wild
things, and some children who hadn’t
yet lost memory of their true nature. They
make me happy in their way of being
of this world.

I think in each one of us there are words
that we’ve been asked to speak, but not
all of us do. Sometimes, there is just too
much keeping them choked down for too
long and we forget what a voice is for. Then,
grief, like firmly wrapped talons, won’t let go.

There are stories like that in my family tree,
silences where there should have been words.
I’ve learned to be able to speak to them, but
finding listeners isn’t easy.

What about you? What are your words,
and have you spoken them out to the world?
Have you implored people to listen? Please
do. It will change things. I promise.

In the Kalahari, there’s a goshawk on the branch
of a tree rooted in the cradle of humanity,
chanting, over and over again, something
that he wants you to hear.

Listen.

As I pray that you will.


© 2018/Jamie K. Reaser
For book project collaboration with artist Mark Collins

Saturday, December 22, 2018

Solstice Moon
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


How come no one ever told me her stories?
Never said, “Look up there, see?” Why wasn’t
I birthed into awe?

I spent so much energy trying to shine, to
be the bright object of affection. But, I wasn’t.
And, I grew out of it.

Now I can see the obvious and grieve its
invisibility without a need to claim ownership
of it. This existence is enough for me
to know that I came from somewhere.

In the branches there are memories of birds,
but no birds, yet. Do you understand how
things change?

Oh, how lovely, the solstice moon. She lavishes
me with the bold textures of the face that
looks upon me. He has always looked down
upon me. And, I’m so grateful.


© 2018/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Touch the Sky



















Art: Mark Collins
www.markcollinsfineart.com/



There’s a first time to touch the sky.
I feel mine coming.

***

How do we distinguish yearning
from escaping? As I teeter on the edge,
I’m realizing that it is yearning that
lifts us away from that which has
grown too small. There are
once-it-fit-so-well places that we
must depart from.

***

The eagle banked against the storm
clouds. I saw it out there, but
I felt it in here.

Around and around, caressing the
directions, all of them, with long,
grey wing tips. I knew that it was
thanking some god and yet praying.
It wasn’t done with desire. Not nearly.

As powerful as it was, it became small
to me. I thought, “How does it do
that on those flimsy feathers?”

I was swept away.

***

Do you have wings,
and is there a sky calling your soul
to journey toward some horizon?

Oh, then, please—you must take
the heavy step across the sill and
rise before the thermals
dissipate at day’s end.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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Friday, December 21, 2018

Yule
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


How did the holly know it would need to color grey?
And the oak, that there was good reason to hold
auburn leaves this long?
Who told them of this cold darkness and our
unadmitted need for gods to thank?
This day of this season -
when the long-nights moon gives herself over,
I know how to hear the gasp of all the living things
that have been praying for the return of the light.
What I know too, and want to say, and want you to hear
is that with the sun arises a requisite attentiveness.
What is there, right there, to see?
Can you kneel down, humbled, and act upon a thing?
Can you find yourself blessed by any revelation?
Can you remember the unuttered agreement
that holds you steadfast?
What else is there but what is before us?
Mustn’t we tread this way though now we see it?
Though now we know?
Tell me you will greet me at dawn with joy.



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

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Sunday, October 14, 2018

The White Bear











Photo: (c) Creative Commons (modified)


I had few stuffed animals as a child. One was
a soft white bear. I loved him. He comforted.
He was given to me when I was in the hospital,
when people thought I was dying.

I outlived that bear.

~

It was a hot summer’s day, when I saw one at the zoo,
in a concrete cage with an algaed-concrete pool that
he paced the edges of, swinging his big head
back and forth as if he was saying “No” and
again, “No”, continuously, “No”, to his circumstances.
Our eyes never met. If they had, I don’t think
I could have found his soul in there.

I was a young girl then. I think his soul found mine,
and haunts me still. He paces at the edge of my dreams.

~

We are all built for something.

The white bear: mastery of the desolate, of
intimacy with place, of the interface of stark
beauty and harsh realities.

Me, a woman now: telling stories about the
silences that must be heard, by many.

~

I don’t know where our relationship is going,
the white bear and me. Increasingly, our lives are
about fragments:

Melting, fracturing ice flows and stories that don’t
fit together as well as they used to. Reconstruction
isn’t always possible. What happens when we
can no longer trek long, formidable landscapes
under paw or in the imagination?

Do we die?

~

I want to say “No!” to these circumstances.

We have to keep a place in this world for
things that find no comfort in our company,
but remind us that we long to know of them.

I want.

I want the white bear to outlive me.


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Presented at the Arctic Biodiversity Congress
Rovaniemi, Finland, Oct 2018

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Saturday, September 15, 2018

In the Unsuitable

















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


If anyone says, “There’s nothing to do,”
say, “Celebrate beauty,”
but only if you mean it,
only, if you’ve seen it, only if you know for sure
that you can find it in the obvious places
and also in those places that everyone else
considers unsuitable —
because it’s finding it in those moments and
in those places
that saves this world.

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

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Sunday, August 19, 2018

Queen Anne's Lace
















Photo:  (c) Jamie K. Reaser


These changes are given to us so that we pay attention
to what is really important, ask questions,
and live restlessly enough to grow into something
earthy and divine.

When her smock arrives in the old fields, shuttling
back and forth in the breeze, I know to
reflect on gratitude:

Have I been inhabiting it well enough?

Summer days are numbered.

I’ve never been able to answer, yes,
but that’s okay. Gratitude is a timeless thing.
You can cast it backwards or forwards and
live into it in any given moment.

And, so, I’m thankful to be in the good
company of white flowers that rise
above the grass,

weaving the fabric of the
human soul.


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

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Thursday, July 26, 2018

Patience
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


What is a moment? Where
does it begin? When does it end?

How does it spread itself across time?

I want to know if it is a line,
or a circle that has perfected storytelling.

I think that it can be the look in a doe’s
eye when she sees me seeing her
and we both lay down form,
like a sword, at our feet.

There is also the moon, how it comes
through the trees later that night, and

how the tree frogs will crawl, lanky-legged, out onto
the branches and trill lullabies to those
who believe that dreams aren’t just something
that happens to us while we sleep.

If I rush everywhere, as I’m prone to do,
I can’t find a moment,

though, logically, it’s there
in the company of so many others.

I don’t have time.

And, yet, I know the child of me walked in the woods,
and played in brooks,
and had long conversations with
friends that were never ever imaginary. 

So, that’s why I was there,
that late summer afternoon,
standing in the woods, praying for
patience to come back to me. 

And, that's why, in that moment, 
I was there, wondering 
what the doe had been praying for.


© 2018-2019/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Sunday, July 22, 2018

The Bear




















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


It was a summer twilight when we met,
flanked in coneflower and wild bergamot,
a blackberry bush that we shared.
There was mud on the trail from the rains
that fell just hours before. We both made
impressions in it.

Sometimes it feels like it will kill me to
walk away from beauty. It's what I
breathe.

What's dangerous is what we have
forgotten most about this world.


(c) 2018/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Saturday, June 23, 2018

The Song of the Phoenix
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


What can be said about you in truth is unknown,
but still you hearten long-wearied worlds with
the idea that we can rise again from
dear things destroyed.

What form are you?
What color?

I think the story tellers have taken their
liberties with what is visible, while leaving the great
sages to contemplate despair, wonderment, joy
and other unsleepable things that cannot be seen.

What calls out to you to do as you do for
five hundred years at a turn without reward
or even the acrid scent of mercy?

Ashes to ashes, note the most trusted scribes,
till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art, and unto dust
shalt thou return,

though they didn’t realize that it was you
at the time of scripture.

Your entombment and decay,
teachings, warnings, reckonings:

we must not diminish the ancestor’s
departing blessedness for the ancestor is the
vessel from which new life emerges.

So must say the toad of the tadpole,
the tree of the seed,

the man of his mother,
the woman of this earth, and

the earth of something wordless.

I’ve never heard spoken of your song,
but recently I learned it

as it glided, breathlessly,
across my own vocal chords
in response to some beckoning
from above.

It seems that I am the Life that
has been left behind.



© 2018-2019/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Monday, May 14, 2018

Tucked In




















Art: Mark Collins
www.markcollinsfineart.com/


Do you remember it, being tucked in? Secure.
Afraid of nothing. Faithful. There was a trust
in something greater, wasn’t there? To be held.
Something so big from something so simple.

At bedtime, did you request it?

“Tuck me in, please.”

“Please, tuck me in.”

So, the barred owl was there in the beech,
tucked in, peering outward to the world
with dark round eyes that I couldn’t quite figure,
but there was something big and meaningful
behind them, maybe something pained, and I
thought about things that I hadn’t been thinking
about, not before the owl:

How sometimes we need to be held tightly,
and for long enough. Long enough is so
important.

How as an adult it can seem so very hard to
get tucked in. Maybe there’s a hug, yes. But,
is it long enough?

How it seems we’ve lost our trust, maybe
our faith in something greater, a caring
something. Caring is so important.

There is a longing I know well.

You?

I think about being tucked in and
wonder: could this be our animal
nature?

Do we, all of us, need to know
that we are being held?

And, do we need to trust that it
will be for long enough?


~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins
"Tucked In" has been accepted into the Birds In Art Exhibition

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Sunday, April 15, 2018

Goldfinches





















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser


The goldfinches insist that this life is worth living,
and that there’s something yet to be done with this
pained world that is beautiful.

I’ve had my doubts. You?

They choose the loveliest branches, redbud budding.
They sweeten the air with sweet sound. Happy sound.
They flash brilliant yellow as they come, as they go.
They can’t be anything but joy. I’ve noticed.

Are these prayers answered? These emphatic moments
that won’t let us turn away. If so, who sends them?

Here. Here.

You. Here.

Look. Listen. It’s going to be okay.

See? Goldfinches.

A moment ago, there was a goldfinch there.

I saw it.

That was all I needed.

Someone knew.

Somehow.


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

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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Said the Rabbit
















Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Out and about,
to find something green,
like we all have been awaiting green.
And, the spring rain, it wants to help,
at least as much of the sun we crave,
it laps at the Earth saying, “Arise!”
And, everywhere there is something
stirring that is remembering, or perhaps
discovering, its relationship with the light.
But this moment is for the rabbit,
the rabbit and me. And, our thoughts.

Maybe they are the same, or similar.

Are we leaping towards something that
is new and expecting us to show
ourselves?
Could it be joyful? Could it be dangerous?

Rumi proposes that lovers meet in
a field. He knows about openness and
vulnerability: what it takes to be seen.

And, the rabbit says:
“We are in a field. Right now. We are in a field.”

And, I think: This is true.

And, the rabbit says:
“It is good to see that you have come
out from the darkness.”

And, I don’t know what to think.

But, I’m suddenly very happy.


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

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Sunday, March 25, 2018

The Nature of Reflections









A


rt: Mark Collins



If I were to reflect on the nature of water,
I’d have to say, “Ducks!”

Think about it.
I know you had a childhood too.

~

For a time, my best friend was Kristin Mason.
She lived on a farm with chickens and ducks,
and a brown-and-white pony.

We scattered cracked corn.
We collected eggs.
We brushed Nutmeg, the pony.

One night, I got to stay for dinner.
Her mom made duck with orange sauce,
wild rice, and artichokes.

That was the night I decided two things:

1.       I was going to learn to cook.
2.       Someday, I’d live on a farm.

I have a farm. I love to cook.

~
My sisters and I were clever girls.

Father was directed to get us out of the house.
It was the Saturday before Easter.
He wanted to know where we wanted to go.
We said, “The old farm store.”
He obliged without asking why.
When we walked in, he knew.
The stale air was filled with peeps and quacks.
He wasn’t going to get out of this one.

One box. Three ducklings.

Sunny.
Tippy.
Waddles.

That was about a year before the divorce.

~
Children are told a story about a
duckling that is big and grey and ugly.

Everyone, even the old farmer, is
mean to it. They make it feel so ashamed.

But, then, one day, the duckling looks into
the river and sees it’s authentic self.

And, it is beautiful.

And, it knows it.

~
There is a sign on a post by the lake.

“Don’t feed the ducks!”

People tear up bread and throw it to them.
Millions of loaves annually. Seriously.
Some people are religious about it:
every morning or every evening,
out there with the ducks, throwing.

They dabble.
They waddle. Sometimes, fast.
They quack.

But, don’t do it. It’s not good for the ducks.

Why don’t we pay attention to the signs?

They are right there. In front of us.

~

Where I went to college, there was a pond.
I’d stop there on my way to and from classes,
to visit the ducks. I loved those mallards.

Once a red-tailed hawk came down from a big
beech and landed on a drake. The duck screamed
and thrashed. Students screamed, some running away,
some running toward. Death arrived and fed the
living while we watched.

Emotions are never calculated into predator-prey equations.

But, it was mating season that I remember most.
How cruel the pursuit of a hen could be. There
were always feathers flying, torn from the nape
of the neck. And, near-drownings.

They say not to anthropomorphize. But, I did.

And, I still do.

And, how it makes me feel matters.

~

These are my reflections.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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