Meaningful Relationship

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The dew-dampened swallowtail

braves her first flight of the day,

heavy with night on her wings

but compelled to risk everything

for voices calling out to her to nectar

them into service.

We can’t do this alone,

this gifting of ourselves,

this making meaning of

our embodiment.

Everything is longing for you to give

it purpose through relationship.

Inhale plant.

Exhale animal.

Inhale plant.

Exhale animal…

The ochre-colored grasshopper

half-floating, half-sunk

in the water bucket

showered my hand with dainty kisses

when I lifted him, dripping,

and kept him company in the sun

until he could cast into the

grasses and strum.

Today, it was our task

to love each other.

Tomorrow, the birds will sing

for me as I leave them

an offering of striped

sunflower gratitude.

The toad will wink at me

with his left golden-orb

and puff his heavenly body

when I pass him on the

muddied trail,

saying, “Hello Handsome.”

There is no end to the possibilities

of what we could do for each other.

Sit with that for a spell.

~

 “How can I help?”

With these four words,

you can live

the meaning of life.

With these four words,

we can make a world.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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Lavender

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The bumble bees and I

are drawn to elongated

crowns of lavender flowers

on erect emerald stems.

Only in a world in which

souls can rub up against each other

could you find such creation –

enticing to all the senses.

Let me be here in the physical –

To feel,

to smell,

to see,

to hear,

to taste the knowable,

to intuit the Great Mystery.

Might these alluring blossoms

and these yielding insects

be evidence of our Godliness,

and that every living thing

is a mated aspect

of Heaven?

My body says, “yes.”

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

What I have learned:

If you cannot love yourself,

you cannot truly love this

world,

with its harsh passions

avowed to setting you free.

The fish on your plate

is a gift from the sea -
who asks for your

salty tears in return,

The air asks only to play

in your lungs,

The swift that you re-member

that you can fly.

I’ve walked barefoot in mud

in order to find my way

Home.

It’s the only way I know how

to reconcile my longing for

a Mother.

Choose to be.

In the end,

You were the only one really capable

of loving yourself

enough.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

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The Annual

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Your presence would

terrify me

if it weren’t my desire

to be destroyed.

I am like the flower

who yearns to drop my

petals so that I may

go to seed,

and bloom anew as

an entire meadow

perfuming the sky.

This self is a limited

concept –

It pushes hard against

my inner skin,

saying,

“Let me out!”

The tight-bodied seed

of me cracks open.

The unfurling sprout of me

rises through the soil,

wishing to speak only

in the plural.

This is how I live –

rooted and

reaching for the sun.

And this is why

I choose to die

an annual –

So that there is more

of me to give myself

to you.

© 2012-2014/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Re-Union: Coming Home to Each Other" (a work in progress)

(Feel free to share)