The Last Full Moon

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

She beckoned me
to come to her
in silence.

She was radiant, glowing
and I was eager to lap at
her with a poet’s tongue.

But, no.

There was something else.

Something that reminded me of
my grandmother,

Pale and cold-bodied,
lying there,
dead,
in a viewing coffin

in a room frenetic with
stillness.

It took only seconds to realize:

Air thick with the essence
of ‘Goodbye’ ~

Ahh. Yes.

And then I knew:

She, as we have known Her,
was leaving us.

In This Time,
she would be the last 
full moon.

There is a reverence for Elders
that can split a heart open
when it arrives
from the humble depths
of soul.

Oh how I felt it,
and am feeling it still.

Silence.

It’s for everything ~

Everything,
 
that is too important to say.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Swerving to Miss Caterpillars

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

In the Autumn,

when thirteen-segments,

fat and bristled,

dare the frenetic roads to find

tall, dry grasses in which to sleep

themselves into something

utterly different,

caterpillars can be your prayer.

What kind of person do you

choose to be?

Every moment of every day

you have this question put before

you by everything around you.

Everything.

And, everyone.

In that instant in which you wake up,

how will

you emerge?

Driving down Route 33,

at this very moment,

I make my choice:

I choose to be the kind of person

who swerves to miss caterpillars.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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Eclipsing

Image: origin unknown

“Wear no one’s shadow,”

said the Sun,

throwing off the dark

night of the day.

The light you most seek

must be your own,

not a celestial arriving

or re-incarnation of stories

that have outgrown

their telling-time -

These are Earth bound only

to re-mind you of

your own forgotten power

of illumination.

Here.

Here in your vulnerability.

Here in your broken-heartedness.

Here is where you should

Look.

Everything that has ever cracked

you open has served its purpose.

All light wants to get out into the world.

When I watch you,

I cannot help but wonder

if the sorrow residing behind 

your water-pooled eyes isn't the

cry for help from the grieving torch 

that you hid 

under a belly-scorched bushel 

long ago.

You must end this eclipsing of Self.

When?

When will it be alright for you to shine?

I cannot help but think

that the time

is now.

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

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The Quiet

    

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I am inspired by the quiet.

Not the silence that would indicate

that I have gone far away from

here and forsaken the meaning

of my life,

but the quiet that comes into a place

like a soft-landing owl;

the quiet that says

everyone and everything is present,

and they are listening.

It’s a quietude that

is too often reserved

for the thresholds of life

and death,

when the spirits are busily

re-minding us of

our emotions,

and testing our concepts

of right

and wrong.

In this world,

How generous we can be with life

when we stop needing to be the

mockingbird on the post

morning,

noon,

and under the nauseating yellow glow

of dingy street light.

There are days when voices

should be reserved for

speaking nothing more than,

“Yes,”

And only in response to

the questions

that no one dared

ask.

© 2012-2020/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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To Know This World

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

To know this world

is to surrender to the hostile forces

of Love –

The ones that leave you naked

and struggling with your anonymity

in the face of everything that

has recognized your magnificence.

I say this not out of experience,

but out of faith in that which

is determined to bring us alive

even as we make grand investments

in our reluctance

to live.

What can a day be for

but to

open the eyes?

When you love yourSelf

enough,

Even this is possible.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser