Intimacy

Photo: Jamie K. Reaser

The morning light as it peeks in from the East,

finding me still snuggled under a duvet of

owl-winged dreams,

whispers with a lisp of hopeful eroticism,

“Are you awake?”

The barking dog beckoning as the day takes hold,

“Come, come! I have something to show you!”

And I rise, pulling on aged moccasins

and little more, following her up a rain-slick

mountain slope, brushing past ferns and

taking the piercing of brambles as love nips,

until we reach the erect trunk of an old cedar tree,

and up there I see two large raccoons

making love.

The wind choreographing the boxwood boughs at

the perimeter of the old homestead chimney,

nimble enough to remember who planted them

and why he felt so drawn to keep the

company of evergreen shrubs.

His longing for relationship grows here like an

ever-deepening caress upon the land,

like a caress upon the body.

I am touched by his handiwork, daily,

though we’ve never met

and chances are good that She’s long since

welcomed a man like that

into Her.

The ultisol soils that occupy the garden bed

and the underlayment of my nails

on the very best of days.

Hundreds of thousands of years in the making

and molding, clay from the bodies of

the requisite dead,

feeds me each time I bring a piece

of dark, curly-leafed kale to my pale lips.

Washing is such a complex act:

It requires you to decide between lovers –

water or dirt.

Sometimes I want to let them both take hold.

You,

You permitting me to see what remains wild

in your eyes, what you have refused

to give away to the hungry forces that would

domesticate your soul and talk of it

as a conceptual framework for corporate

earnings.

Oh and me,

Me surrendering to the wet touch

of this one glistening, salty tear

as it glides over my sun-danced cheek

and drops

into the abyss of neither

here nor there –

an offering of reciprocity for

the intimate communion

that awakens me.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

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