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)