Courting the Wild: Love Affairs with Reptiles and Amphibians

Hiraeth Press has released the 2nd edition of 'Courting the Wild: Love Affairs with Reptiles and Amphibians!' This anthology is filled with stories about the first loves - that very moment when the authors fell in love with a reptile or amphibian and it changed their lives forever. It's a must for the naturalists in your life.

For more information: http://hiraethpress.com/store/books/love-affairs-with-reptiles-and-amphibians-2nd-edition-edited-by-jamie-k-reaser/

Perhaps An Agreement Has Been Forgotten

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

They had barely opened their eyes
when the darkness came, muscular and slithering,

forked-tongue tasting the air, lapping

his way through the round portal to the other world –

a world they were yet to hear the stories of -

They had no need. Everything had come to them.

And this was coming too.

Yes, well. Truth be told, I wasn’t there.

But I know.

I know because we met in the barn only moments

passed and he was bulging with what I had

only yesterday decided to love.

I sighed, and decided to love equally,

But continued to wonder on this mysterious planet for a bit –

its gives and takes.

Who wins? Who loses?

I was taught to ask that question.

It’s typically a force of nature to act against

each other they’d said.

Predation. Competition. Parasitism.

I opened the wooden box and looked inside.

Empty.

But it’s early yet, perhaps, they’ll try again,

I mused.

Honestly, I hoped.

Then the big questions alighted:

Could this loss have been an act of greater-than-self service –

a death for something else to live by?

What does it look like to feed the holy?

An ill-missioned chickadee perched on the nearest fence post,

a small green caterpillar in its dainty, sharp beak.

I wonder if we are so closed off to the concept of cooperation,

to faith in cooperation,

that we so seldom see it nested in relationships 
being enacted around us,

so rarely choose to speak that word, with its plentitude 
of circular lettering.

But the soul knows.

Everything depends on the body of otherness.

I have to believe

we have somehow forgotten a sacred agreement

that we once said “yes” to in the company of wild things.

And, at the very least,

most certainly at the very least,

I believe,

We should be offering thanks.

In abundance.

© 2013/Jamie K. Reaser

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

Turtles

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

They’ve figured this out,

clearly - see how time chooses

the wise – what it is to know the

fleshy body as home  - to inhabit this place

that so many fear to claim with the name they’ve been given.

And notice how peaceful one can then become,

though, yes, there are exceptions.

Was it patience?

Was it perseverance?

Let the thin veneer of moss grow slick and

rings hint-gossip of life story in the scutes of

her carapace as she strides,

slowly, between some place and

somewhere else, maybe a tawny mushroom patch;

it is of no great nerosis to her, or me.

I know she is out ahead of us, this one.

I - standing here beside her -

I am praying that someday, 

some day,

we’ll be able to catch up.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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Beetles

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Perhaps they are here to teach us humility,

And that is what so many people
find disturbing about their six legs

And hard casing, and the way they crawl

and fly – Sometimes under the yellowy porch lights

at night. Sometimes in the thick garden. What they read

with antennae, I know, our world-lonely bodies

could never know. This I grasp at as an ache.

They need not adorn themselves. I suspect

the thought of doing so would never cross their

little minds. Why bother? They are the living jewels

sculpted by the very same jeweler we deny,

that we will not give ourselves over to.

We can’t count them. We can’t name them.  Not all of them.

And in this is evidence of our lack of desire for

true intimacy with the living.

We wish to remain strangers from the multitudes.

You cannot convince me otherwise; everywhere you can see

how the backs are turned.

What is this great fear of finding out who we

are through relationship with another?

I think that I must admit this:

I have a love for the stars that course the heavens,

And at least an equal love for the beetles of this earthly plane.

If I can do but one thing and one thing only with

the time I have remaining,

it is to bow my head

and open my heart

to this –

an inordinate fondness for life.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Authore

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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The Vittles of Death

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The broad-winged hawk

raised from the rocky creek bed

with a time-limited garter snake

in her talons.

I knew the bird by the

horizontal white tail barring

and the rapid flap of wing

as she rose toward the emerging canopy veil.

I knew the snake by the

vertical yellow stripes

running the length of body to tail.

They gleamed in the sunlight

stored up by the poplar leaves

for cloudy days

such as this.

What of him was not twisted

and entwined in a mutual

death grip with scaly hawk feet

streamed downward –

though in mid air,

gravity still laying a claim

saying,

“You will return to me.”

Perhaps all of us knew gravity

wasn’t expecting to see that snake

again in the same configuration

of embodiment.

Most of us were okay with it,

under the circumstances.

So bird and snake got me thinking

about how we living beings

must feed our inner beloved

on the vittles of Death.

Love notes take many forms:

Here my Beloved are the cords of attachment

to beliefs proven too small and inflexible,

to things that constrict and clutter,

and to all those who can only embrace us

in pathologies of pain.

Here too I lay down all of the possessions

that ego has acquired through the depletion

of Self and Other.

There are many.

Let me nourish you my Dearest,

tending cellular breath and memory,

on the flesh of animal and plant.

Though I’d like to promise you that every

being came to our lips by choice,

I don’t know this to be true.

Our gratitude needs be far greater than

Grandmother’s mourning.

I kept walking,

knowing somewhere beyond my sight

the extended arm of a large tree on mountain slope

was hosting hawk and serpent

at the shared breakfast table of Gain and Loss.

But before this story was completely over,

I came upon another common garter snake -

this one warming belly in the middle of a winding gravel road.

His tongue flicked in and out,

tasting, sensing.

I said,

“Hello Love,”

and gently moved him out of harm’s way.

© 2011-2016/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life" 
and "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems"
(www.hiraethpress.com)


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