Break Free

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

How we need to be free!

I watch the butterflies emerging from their chrysalises,

folded and fat-bodied with amazement,

“What are these?!”

and the damsels, stepping out of their cellophane-like 
exoskeletons like elegant ladies exiting a tattered 
carriage for a long anticipated gala.

In the soft-lined cups hidden within 
the rose and blackberry brambles,

naked little beaked-things are cracking 
their way out of perfect eggs

and finding their “feed me, World!” voice.

The bluebells have once again pushed through

the hard red clay and molding leaf litter

to make offerings of delightfully nodding flowers, which

bees newly emerged from comb cells visit for a spell.

While, at the pond, a bronze-colored froglet

walks onto dry land and experiments with hopping.

Do you know this kind of satisfaction –

The kind that can only come from whole-bodied emergence?

This, I believe, is what is impatiently awaiting you.

Spring, in every which way, is repeating two words:

Break. Free.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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Finally, I Get It

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I keep trying to speak eloquently

on behalf

of an eagle,

Pushing at words,

And failing,

miserably.

He says,

“Where there is power,

 
there is no

need

for force.”

© 2013/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (to be published by Hiraeth Press in June 2013; www.hiraethpress.com)

The Inheritance

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I open the door to the world every morning,

anticipating, wondering

who will be the first to greet me

as I step onto the earth with eyes still soft

from dreaming.

Will it be pine, or pine warbler?

Who will be beside me

when I kneel at the pond,

walk through the wood,
cross the meadow?

Will I notice them?

Will they notice me?

Never are my days lived alone.

Never are my breaths less than

an exchange of breaths with some

other soul.

Everything wants to be known.

So, for awhile each day, I tend to this

mutual desire for belonging,

Saying, “Hello pretty girl,” to the doe.

stroking the pussy willows.

meditating beside a frog.

This is how I apprentice to love, 
and learn to speak those forgotten words

that acknowledge every living thing
as a simple miracle.

When the day comes that my body

no longer needs to walk out the door

in order to know this fine world,  

I pray that some young person is

stepping across their threshold,

taking a deep breath in the morning air,

and realizing,

this is my inheritance.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems
In honor of Earth Day

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Owl

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

In the arc of my wings,

the amber of my eyes,

the lucid throttle of my talons,

I am built to hold you,

In sacred silence.

How do you choose

to hold

me?

(c) Jamie K. Reaser

From "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (to be published by Hiraeth Press in June 2013; www.hiraethpress.com)

Rising

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Paddling upward through layers of sand

with no knowledge of where to,                                     
crazed, or mightily faithful,
I don’t know and I refuse to judge
these hundreds of tiny flippers
in a frenzy to meet the Great Mystery,
and possibly their death, imminently.

I prefer to crouch here in awe.
What they don’t know, I know:
Ghost crabs, raccoons, birds, big birds,

fish, big fish. They, many of these

little naïve ancient ones, will be snacked upon

like salted popcorn. Nab, swallow, and gone

from this world they barely entered

and could not name.
Look how they rush to their destiny,
risking everything because that’s
what it is to live, though, yes, that’s the terrible secret

that we keep shushing back into the underworld,
and look how they, bellies skidding, go forward to reach
the one world they are made for, and how,

like an equal lover, that world, that mighty crashing world,
is reaching back to them in waves. And, they are met.

Gasp.

Isn’t this what you want?

The perfect fit. The equal lover. 

These precious scrambling things have got it right.

Standing in the sea oat-waving dunes, I’m absolutely sure of it.

How can the body, this body, any body

refuse to take the risk to rise?

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

Photo taken in 1985 while working with the Caretta Research Project on Wassaw Island, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia - the morning I first observed the emergence of nestling loggerhead sea turtles. Unforgettable.

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