Song for the Reindeer

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

For CB and all those who re-member the songs

I owe you my life.

No man can become a man

without otherness.

You are other.

And, you are me.

We are of the same

hoof and bone.

When I consume your body,

you are the knife and the spoon

and the tongue of the ancestors.

How otherwise starved and naked I would be.

Cradle and sled,

You’ve born me

into this world

and across the miles

that no one else cared witness.

My stride is a learned migration

into my self.

Only here can I know flight.

I may be the breath,

But you are the sound of my soul:

This soft rhythm of the taiga.

These branches snapping in the wind.

The keepers drumming at the threshold

of the world

in which we are true brothers.

Blood lines. Life lines.

There is only one world.

And, this music.

Yes, this music ~

I’ve come to understand

is a Man’s initiation.

How could I be without you?

How could I ever be without you?

© 2013-2014/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (www.hiraethpress.com) 

(Feel free to share. Poetry is meant to move.)