Bluebirds

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

We were given bluebirds. Have you

thought about that? Something wanted

us to find some kind of happiness

flitting about in our being. Imagine

the foresight! Humans with our

befuddling ache for something other

than the miracles all around us.

Bluebirds.

What can you do with a bluebird

other than say, “Oh! This day is so

much better now.” That wasn’t

a question, actually. Because it’s

simply true. True like the branch on

which the bluebird perches, or the fence

post beside the old orchard with tart

heirloom apples.

What if a bluebird perched on your

heart? Yes, imagine that! Imagine

what could become of this

unhappy miracled world.

~ Jamie K. Reser, Author

From “Truth and Beauty” (a work in progress)

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Something Dark

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

If you have not been visited by something dark,

beg for it. This world needs your active grieving,

to feel into its voids and diminishments and

ache so heartedly for the absent that it has

a chance to appear, that it can remain long enough

to be considered nothing exceptional at all,

rather, an exquisite, glittering normal that bonds

our likenesses.

For me, it was a raven. It had given away its

song and I was set upon the task of finding it.

I got lost along the way and when I called out

to myself in the hope of being found, I suddenly

recalled that the raven is a well-known

trickster. It never had a song.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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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

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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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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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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