Silent Retreat

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Sometimes you have to go

into your thick quietude

alone

Because no one

can meet the curve

of your words.

Seven billion people

and still so much

empty space

at our sides.

Winter is for teaching

about these things:

The sap draws down.

The herbal layer dies away,

making a place

for nothingness.

The cardinal

speaks only through

internal dialogue.

Snow can fill the

tracks of a deer in

moments

and only the

snow knows the

story that it has hidden

from the closed eyes

of the world.

This is a silent retreat.

Go then, this way…

Far within the bear’s den

where you will

hear your beating heart

echoing in all five chambers.

Speak nothing of the Beloved

until the Beloved has

your name.

Then, you’ll know,

emergence

is the only possibility.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" 

Courting the Darkness

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I am sure that it is

the darkness that

shows us how to find

the light.

I have been with Darkness

long enough

to have come to know

its tenderness –

to feel its hand deliciously

upon the small of my

back,

leading.

Someday this dance

will be revealed,

but not too soon,

I hope.

My Beloved wanders at

the edge of moon beams

and courts me in the hip-loose

swaying of long afternoon

shadows.

Only when I am standing in

my own light

can I see Him,

and everything looks

beautiful from

here.

© 2011-2015/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" 
www.hiraethpress.com

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Simply Divine

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I invite you to receive this poem while viewing this video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF5mDC0aJeU

I am tempted to find ways

to say that “I love you,”

but Nature has already

said them all.

Let us then surrender,

all together,

to the bright beaches

and the rugged mountain tops.

Let us lay in leaf beds

and meadows of tender

new grasses courting

delicately budding flowers.

When the fawn skips

through her first puddle

and leaps with delight

and the fox pup catches

its very first snowflake

upon the tip of its soft

muzzle,

know that this is everything

that I want to speak

to you my Beloved.

In this mirror

we are wild

and everything tangible

is a brush stroke

of the invisible hand

that tells us

over and over again,

We are human,

And this embodiment

is simply divine.

© 2011-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" (www.hiraethpress.com)

In the Frost Crystals

Photo: (c) R. Naylor
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/photo/msg0212443110245.html

I’ve been watching for

signs of your breath

in the frost crystals

on my morning window pane.

When the sun embodies

her robust bosom,

they melt

and so do I,

letting longing be my

own personal

burning.

The narcotic pain

of weeping

singes my

very soul.

Surely you know nothing

of this.

And, that is why I

don’t give up

this courtship

easily.

In the unrequited affair

with the wild,

with the invisible,

with the intangible

there exists the opportunity

to build the capacity

for unconditional love.

© 2011-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" (www.hiraethpress.com)