Call from the Kalahari

Art: Mark Collins
https://markcollinsfineart.com/

Sometimes, we have to make ourselves known,

to perch high enough to be able to chant our

prayers out across open terrain because

to be silent in the scrub would be

to defy something bold and invisible.

I’ve watched birds do this, and other wild

things, and some children who hadn’t

yet lost memory of their true nature. They

make me happy in their way of being

of this world.

I think in each one of us there are words

that we’ve been asked to speak, but not

all of us do. Sometimes, there is just too

much keeping them choked down for too

long and we forget what a voice is for. Then,

grief, like firmly wrapped talons, won’t let go.

There are stories like that in my family tree,

silences where there should have been words.

I’ve learned to be able to speak to them, but

finding listeners isn’t easy.

What about you? What are your words,

and have you spoken them out to the world?

Have you implored people to listen? Please

do. It will change things. I promise.

In the Kalahari, there’s a goshawk on the branch

of a tree rooted in the cradle of humanity,

chanting, over and over again, something

that he wants you to hear.

Listen.

As I pray that you will.

© 2018/Jamie K. Reaser

For book project collaboration with artist Mark Collins

Solstice Moon

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

How come no one ever told me her stories?

Never said, “Look up there, see?” Why wasn’t

I birthed into awe?

I spent so much energy trying to shine, to

be the bright object of affection. But, I wasn’t.

And, I grew out of it.

Now I can see the obvious and grieve its

invisibility without a need to claim ownership

of it. This existence is enough for me

to know that I came from somewhere.

In the branches there are memories of birds,

but no birds, yet. Do you understand how

things change?

Oh, how lovely, the solstice moon. She lavishes

me with the bold textures of the face that

looks upon me. He has always looked down

upon me. And, I’m so grateful.

© 2018/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Touch the Sky

Art: Mark Collins
www.markcollinsfineart.com/

There’s a first time to touch the sky.

I feel mine coming.

***

How do we distinguish yearning

from escaping? As I teeter on the edge,

I’m realizing that it is yearning that

lifts us away from that which has

grown too small. There are

once-it-fit-so-well places that we

must depart from.

***

The eagle banked against the storm

clouds. I saw it out there, but

I felt it in here.

Around and around, caressing the

directions, all of them, with long,

grey wing tips. I knew that it was

thanking some god and yet praying.

It wasn’t done with desire. Not nearly.

As powerful as it was, it became small

to me. I thought, “How does it do

that on those flimsy feathers?”

I was swept away.

***

Do you have wings,

and is there a sky calling your soul

to journey toward some horizon?

Oh, then, please—you must take

the heavy step across the sill and

rise before the thermals

dissipate at day’s end.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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Yule

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

How did the holly know it would need to color grey?

And the oak, that there was good reason to hold

auburn leaves this long?
Who told them of this cold darkness and our

unadmitted need for gods to thank?
This day of this season -
when the long-nights moon gives herself over,
I know how to hear the gasp of all the living things
that have been praying for the return of the light.
What I know too, and want to say, and want you to hear
is that with the sun arises a requisite attentiveness.

What is there, right there, to see?

Can you kneel down, humbled, and act upon a thing?

Can you find yourself blessed by any revelation?
Can you remember the unuttered agreement

that holds you steadfast?
What else is there but what is before us?
Mustn’t we tread this way though now we see it?

Though now we know?
Tell me you will greet me at dawn with joy.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Plant Songs" (a work in progress)

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The White Bear

Photo: (c) Creative Commons (modified)

I had few stuffed animals as a child. One was

a soft white bear. I loved him. He comforted.

He was given to me when I was in the hospital,

when people thought I was dying.

I outlived that bear.

~

It was a hot summer’s day, when I saw one at the zoo,

in a concrete cage with an algaed-concrete pool that

he paced the edges of, swinging his big head

back and forth as if he was saying “No” and

again, “No”, continuously, “No”, to his circumstances.

Our eyes never met. If they had, I don’t think

I could have found his soul in there.

I was a young girl then. I think his soul found mine,

and haunts me still. He paces at the edge of my dreams.

~

We are all built for something.

The white bear: mastery of the desolate, of

intimacy with place, of the interface of stark

beauty and harsh realities.

Me, a woman now: telling stories about the

silences that must be heard, by many.

~

I don’t know where our relationship is going,

the white bear and me. Increasingly, our lives are

about fragments:

Melting, fracturing ice flows and stories that don’t

fit together as well as they used to. Reconstruction

isn’t always possible. What happens when we

can no longer trek long, formidable landscapes

under paw or in the imagination?

Do we die?

~

I want to say “No!” to these circumstances.

We have to keep a place in this world for

things that find no comfort in our company,

but remind us that we long to know of them.

I want.

I want the white bear to outlive me.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Presented at the Arctic Biodiversity Congress
Rovaniemi, Finland, Oct 2018

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In the Unsuitable

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

If anyone says, “There’s nothing to do,”

say, “Celebrate beauty,”

but only if you mean it,

only, if you’ve seen it, only if you know for sure

that you can find it in the obvious places

and also in those places that everyone else

considers unsuitable —

because it’s finding it in those moments and

in those places

that saves this world.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

From "Truth and Beauty: Poems on the Nature of Our Humanity"

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Queen Anne's Lace

Photo:  (c) Jamie K. Reaser

These changes are given to us so that we pay attention

to what is really important, ask questions,

and live restlessly enough to grow into something

earthy and divine.

When her smock arrives in the old fields, shuttling

back and forth in the breeze, I know to

reflect on gratitude:

Have I been inhabiting it well enough?

Summer days are numbered.

I’ve never been able to answer, yes,

but that’s okay. Gratitude is a timeless thing.

You can cast it backwards or forwards and

live into it in any given moment.

And, so, I’m thankful to be in the good

company of white flowers that rise

above the grass,

weaving the fabric of the

human soul.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

From "Plant Songs" (a work in progress)

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Patience

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

What is a moment? Where

does it begin? When does it end?

How does it spread itself across time?

I want to know if it is a line,

or a circle that has perfected storytelling.

I think that it can be the look in a doe’s

eye when she sees me seeing her

and we both lay down form,

like a sword, at our feet.

There is also the moon, how it comes

through the trees later that night, and

how the tree frogs will crawl, lanky-legged, out onto

the branches and trill lullabies to those

who believe that dreams aren’t just something

that happens to us while we sleep.

If I rush everywhere, as I’m prone to do,

I can’t find a moment,

though, logically, it’s there

in the company of so many others.

I don’t have time.

And, yet, I know the child of me walked in the woods,
and played in brooks,
and had long conversations with
friends that were never ever imaginary. 

So, that’s why I was there,
that late summer afternoon,
standing in the woods, praying for
patience to come back to me. 

And, that's why, in that moment, 
I was there, wondering 
what the doe had been praying for.

© 2018-2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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The Bear

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

It was a summer twilight when we met,

flanked in coneflower and wild bergamot,

a blackberry bush that we shared.

There was mud on the trail from the rains

that fell just hours before. We both made

impressions in it.

Sometimes it feels like it will kill me to

walk away from beauty. It's what I

breathe.

What's dangerous is what we have

forgotten most about this world.

(c) 2018/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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The Song of the Phoenix

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

What can be said about you in truth is unknown,

but still you hearten long-wearied worlds with

the idea that we can rise again from

dear things destroyed.

What form are you?

What color?

I think the story tellers have taken their

liberties with what is visible, while leaving the great

sages to contemplate despair, wonderment, joy

and other unsleepable things that cannot be seen.

What calls out to you to do as you do for

five hundred years at a turn without reward

or even the acrid scent of mercy?

Ashes to ashes, note the most trusted scribes,

till thou return unto the ground;

for out of it wast thou taken:

for dust thou art, and unto dust

shalt thou return,

though they didn’t realize that it was you

at the time of scripture.

Your entombment and decay,

teachings, warnings, reckonings:

we must not diminish the ancestor’s

departing blessedness for the ancestor is the

vessel from which new life emerges.

So must say the toad of the tadpole,

the tree of the seed,

the man of his mother,

the woman of this earth, and

the earth of something wordless.

I’ve never heard spoken of your song,

but recently I learned it

as it glided, breathlessly,

across my own vocal chords

in response to some beckoning

from above.

It seems that I am the Life that

has been left behind.

© 2018-2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Tucked In

Art: Mark Collins
www.markcollinsfineart.com/

Do you remember it, being tucked in? Secure.

Afraid of nothing. Faithful. There was a trust

in something greater, wasn’t there? To be held.

Something so big from something so simple.

At bedtime, did you request it?

“Tuck me in, please.”

“Please, tuck me in.”

So, the barred owl was there in the beech,

tucked in, peering outward to the world

with dark round eyes that I couldn’t quite figure,

but there was something big and meaningful

behind them, maybe something pained, and I

thought about things that I hadn’t been thinking

about, not before the owl:

How sometimes we need to be held tightly,

and for long enough. Long enough is so

important.

How as an adult it can seem so very hard to

get tucked in. Maybe there’s a hug, yes. But,

is it long enough?

How it seems we’ve lost our trust, maybe

our faith in something greater, a caring

something. Caring is so important.

There is a longing I know well.

You?

I think about being tucked in and

wonder: could this be our animal

nature?

Do we, all of us, need to know

that we are being held?

And, do we need to trust that it

will be for long enough?

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins
"Tucked In" has been accepted into the Birds In Art Exhibition

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Goldfinches

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The goldfinches insist that this life is worth living,

and that there’s something yet to be done with this

pained world that is beautiful.

I’ve had my doubts. You?

They choose the loveliest branches, redbud budding.

They sweeten the air with sweet sound. Happy sound.

They flash brilliant yellow as they come, as they go.

They can’t be anything but joy. I’ve noticed.

Are these prayers answered? These emphatic moments

that won’t let us turn away. If so, who sends them?

Here. Here.

You. Here.

Look. Listen. It’s going to be okay.

See? Goldfinches.

A moment ago, there was a goldfinch there.

I saw it.

That was all I needed.

Someone knew.

Somehow.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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Said the Rabbit

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Out and about,

to find something green,

like we all have been awaiting green.

And, the spring rain, it wants to help,

at least as much of the sun we crave,

it laps at the Earth saying, “Arise!”

And, everywhere there is something

stirring that is remembering, or perhaps

discovering, its relationship with the light.

But this moment is for the rabbit,

the rabbit and me. And, our thoughts.

Maybe they are the same, or similar.

Are we leaping towards something that

is new and expecting us to show

ourselves?

Could it be joyful? Could it be dangerous?

Rumi proposes that lovers meet in

a field. He knows about openness and

vulnerability: what it takes to be seen.

And, the rabbit says:

“We are in a field. Right now. We are in a field.”

And, I think: This is true.

And, the rabbit says:

“It is good to see that you have come

out from the darkness.”

And, I don’t know what to think.

But, I’m suddenly very happy.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Truth and Beauty: Poems On the Nature of Our Humanity"

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The Nature of Reflections

A

rt: Mark Collins

If I were to reflect on the nature of water,

I’d have to say, “Ducks!”

Think about it.

I know you had a childhood too.

~

For a time, my best friend was Kristin Mason.

She lived on a farm with chickens and ducks,

and a brown-and-white pony.

We scattered cracked corn.

We collected eggs.

We brushed Nutmeg, the pony.

One night, I got to stay for dinner.

Her mom made duck with orange sauce,

wild rice, and artichokes.

That was the night I decided two things:

1.       I was going to learn to cook.

2.       Someday, I’d live on a farm.

I have a farm. I love to cook.

~

My sisters and I were clever girls.

Father was directed to get us out of the house.

It was the Saturday before Easter.

He wanted to know where we wanted to go.

We said, “The old farm store.”

He obliged without asking why.

When we walked in, he knew.

The stale air was filled with peeps and quacks.

He wasn’t going to get out of this one.

One box. Three ducklings.

Sunny.

Tippy.

Waddles.

That was about a year before the divorce.

~

Children are told a story about a

duckling that is big and grey and ugly.

Everyone, even the old farmer, is

mean to it. They make it feel so ashamed.

But, then, one day, the duckling looks into

the river and sees it’s authentic self.

And, it is beautiful.

And, it knows it.

~

There is a sign on a post by the lake.

“Don’t feed the ducks!”

People tear up bread and throw it to them.

Millions of loaves annually. Seriously.

Some people are religious about it:

every morning or every evening,

out there with the ducks, throwing.

They dabble.

They waddle. Sometimes, fast.

They quack.

But, don’t do it. It’s not good for the ducks.

Why don’t we pay attention to the signs?

They are right there. In front of us.

~

Where I went to college, there was a pond.

I’d stop there on my way to and from classes,

to visit the ducks. I loved those mallards.

Once a red-tailed hawk came down from a big

beech and landed on a drake. The duck screamed

and thrashed. Students screamed, some running away,

some running toward. Death arrived and fed the

living while we watched.

Emotions are never calculated into predator-prey equations.

But, it was mating season that I remember most.

How cruel the pursuit of a hen could be. There

were always feathers flying, torn from the nape

of the neck. And, near-drownings.

They say not to anthropomorphize. But, I did.

And, I still do.

And, how it makes me feel matters.

~

These are my reflections.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

A book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

http://markcollinsfineart.com/

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