Attentiveness

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

This world is known only through attentiveness;

snails, their eyes circumnavigating on long stalks, 
are wise to things, and I think this

is also true of stones. On some days,

it can be me. But on other days,

I am lost to some other place and its speed-crazed trivialities.

If I believed in shame, I’d place it here.

Every tracker trains to move slowly,

but not all proceed down the trail re-membering

what they are searching for.

This makes a difference.

Tonight I’m just being still, and sitting with the realization that

I don’t yet know the pattern of lines running

the length of your palm.

It’s not for lack of interest,

It’s just that souls can take

awhile to  

say, “Hello.”

Eventually our hands will meet.

I have not forgotten.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World"
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Saying Goodbye

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I stood there in the thick, milky dusk,

my boots bedded in rotting straw and the withered

bodies of plants that I had dug into this place.

We tended each other for a season.

I knew them by touch and smell,

and how slight variations in color or a pucker

of leaf were words wanting understanding.

I came here to learn to listen.

The tomato hornworm caterpillars visited,

and the cabbage butterflies,

and we shared,

time and other things.

Wings. I’ve always wanted a pair, or two.

When I was on my knees,

I wondered who had stripped this land raw,

and why so much of this practice 
was new to me at this age,

and what the earthworms thought 
about while navigating

the valleys and ridges of my rough palms.

Could they tell how much I adored them?

Oh, yes, these were the musings of summer,

thoughts freed while the mind

had the luxury of abundance.

This though was Autumn. It was Autumn waning:

As I looked into the night to come,

I saw a cricket lying down,

frost crystals colonizing his legs.

Goodbyes needed to be said.

A garden can teach us to be earnest with this word,

Goodbye.

At the interface of starvation

and nourishment is where to harvest

the roots of deep gratitude.

And so, I began to offer this word to the yet-living,

letting the growing sense of emptiness

be my understanding.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

And again,

“Goodbye.”

Inside,

the woodstove was awaiting me.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in "Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World"

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Monarch Butterflies

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

This is what convinced me of it:

Watching monarch butterflies nectar

on Mexican sunflowers under

a dusty Autumn sky.

How brilliant the orange

of petals and wings!

How I am deeply awed

by these strong, delicate bodies

that float and land,

and support and feed.

How I must ask:

“Really?

These moments are mine to live?”

How they are silent,

yet the world is full of their delight.

How my heart can’t contain

this much beauty,

it, simply, can’t.

Yes.

I am convinced of it:

We didn’t come here to become whole.

We came here to learn how to

break wide open.

~Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World

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Praying Mantis

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

All day long the mantis is there,

praying atop the tall purple coneflower,

a vestibule to other worlds

Where wise ones answer:

“It’s already been gifted to you,”

And hope we realize this soon enough.

Butterflies come.

Some brilliant and new to air, still

marveling at what has become of them,

Others thin-winged and edge-tattered,

realizing that beauty alone cannot

save a soul.

It’s never over quickly.

When the mantis strikes and takes

a great spangled fritillary into her arms,

folding it against itself so that the underwings

reveal iridescent constellations to the heavens

and the long, soft body is easy to taste,

I must resign myself to this.

I must sit with this, this pain and death

that is an

answer to a prayer,

this sound of tiny mantis mouthparts scissoring

into flesh that yet twitches and I believe

knows the agony of form and spirit.

Yes, I must.

Because this is it. Life.

And it must be looked at and sat with

and listened to long enough to realize

that crickets are chirping and crows cawing

and barred owls asking ‘Who cooks for you?’

and acknowledged that I do this too, every day.

And this is how I remind myself

what it is

to have prayers answered.

This is how I teach my heart gratitude.

~Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Coming Home: Learning to Actively Love this World" 


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Blue Lobelia

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The blue lobelia has arisen

and opened its mouths to

the bumblebees.

These are the days to take

nothing for granted.

That droning cicada might be the last.

That creaking katydid might be the last.

The butterflies are lying, spent, on the ground.

The warblers are starting to sneak away in the night.

The squirrels are frantic.

There is no acorn mast this year.

They wonder how they will ever gather

and open enough walnuts and hickories

to make it through.

Odds are, many of them won’t.

Death frightens.

Maybe I’ll put out corn this winter.

Have I taken the time to search out 

a bird's nest and count the eggs?

Have I sat long enough among 

the tall meadow flowers?

Have I told the fat, rough-bodied toads 

how truly lovely they are?

Have I let at least one mystery 

take hold of me?

What will it be like when the first flurries come?

Will I look back, wondering where I had been all this time?

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

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