Sensational Curves

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

Stick figures are drawn,

and then, hung.

As children, what were we

supposed to learn from that

about body image?

Sometimes, they called me

a stick figure. It wasn’t meant

to be nice. Once, in front of

the other kids, my coach handed

me a big tub of peanut butter

and told me to eat it.

I wondered if I’d ever have

curves and if I’d be lovable

then.

I thought:

“That would be sensational!”

~

When people think of flamingos,

I think they think of pink and,

then, legs. Maybe they stand there,

for a bit, contemplating that beak

that was put on upside down

and backwards.

But, you know, if you really watch

a flamingo, you must conclude

that they are all about showing

off their curves.

Strut right, leg up, forward, down.

Left, leg up, forward, down. Lean

in, twist just so, make it hippy,

lift a little wing.

Paying attention to me now?

Stretch the long neck out, up, angle,

slowly now, in, start to tuck, roll,

bring the head around, look at that

shape, the sensational curves!

Hold for a count of five.

Do you still think we are alone

in the universe?

~

Every day, well almost every day,

when the painter takes a walk down

to the stream, he picks up a pebble

and gives it a name. Something, like:

“Sensational.”

He started doing this for the poet,

but those little stones claimed

his life too.

So, now, when it lands in the water,

with a plink or a plop,

what ripples forth, in row after

row of curves, is a two-fold blessing.

We are not alone.

~

And, there’s at least one more

thing to say about curves.

Look to the right, to the left,

in front, behind. Turn your head

all around.

Pay attention now. Notice that

we are all lovable.

Isn’t that sensational!

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

For a book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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Autumn Rain

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

There have been years, when the summer has

been so dry, that this wish arrives deep

in the soul, wanting autumn rains to yield to prayers.

I think that there are within us certain longings

that, no matter the rules of the times, find us

embodying our animal ways, the longings

that take us back to the realization that this

isn’t ours to control, that there is something else

out there that we depend on. Today, it’s the

rain and whoever it is that caretakes the rain.

And too, there is this thing that happens when

you realize that the earth is rejoicing along with

you—listen to the way it praises!—that some of our

desires are shared with things that are still enlivened

though it has become convenient to think them not.

So, this is what it is like to light the first fire in the

woodstove as the rain pelts the metal roof and I

consider that here too is another day to be grateful

for the company that keeps me alive.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

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The Black Walnut Trees

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

When I arrived here things

were not as I had expected,
not at all, truth be told.
On my first night, I slept
out on the deck, under the
stars and the arm of a tree.
In the night, she came to me,
a bright shining she who
was the tree and she said,
“I know why you are here. The
land called you here.” With
that, she left, but I did not.
One day, a man came up the

drive in an old rust-bottomed

pick up. He thought me a fool.

“Mam, I see ya got these big

ol’ trees, dangerous, gonna fall

on yur place. I’ll cut ‘em fer ya,

even carry ‘em away, cheap.”

I know a thing or two about
being swindled, and also how
to talk like I’m from a place.

“Sir, ain’t nobody gonna touch

my black walnuts! Not today,

not ever. No, Sir, they ain’t.

Now, git!” He understood me.

The truck bumped its way back

down the drive at, quite remarkably,

twice the speed it had arrived.

He hasn’t called on me since.

So, the black walnut grove still
extends its arms, still embraces

my little cabin, still embraces me,
still knows secrets that

I haven’t yet learned

of myself.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in Conversations with Mary: Words of Attention and Devotion

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The Necessary Voyage

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

When the birds have come to say, “wake and rise,”

I do, gathering my life into a bundle of severances,

resting words of gratitude on the brows of the departed,

some of them in mirrors, my heart used up in this place.

Not of all voyagers get maps or a compass that points
to something other than grief. Some must go without

bearing. Actually, the honest books, sermons, and town

criers say that many and many more are going this way,

just on from somewhere destroyed, hoping with an acrid,

musty hope that there is a healing land before them.
For a man to leave what he loves, there’s a good chance

he’s already died, or begun to and surely will.

Does one remain a citizen of a fallen city?

Shall I ask this of the woodland creatures? Shall I ask it

of my name and those who carried it into the world

before me over long distances because, well, because

love departed the soul of some person and place.

At my desk near a large picture window, I write and
and wonder while listening to the song of birds

who will soon lift and go. What can I inherit of this?
What’s there to make of the necessary voyage when

the land no longer offers a tending embrace.

I don’t know how the birds do it, keeping their glee

about it year after year. We humans aren’t built

like that it seems. Life after life it goes on, the

wretched longing for birth place, for story place,

for the place that made sense of us.

We arrive wounded, betrayed by the gods, weeping,
and impatient to love and be loved again. Looking

around I realize that we are all necessary voyagers.

How do I make my peace with that fact? How

do I reconcile my ability to hang seed for the birds,

but not to provision water in a desert, or a map and

compass to the great ship captain?

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in Conversations with Mary: Words of Attention and Devotion

Winner of the Nautilus Book Award silver medal for poetry

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I Bow Down

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I bow down.

I bow down to the sky that oversees

the liars and the truthsayers.

I bow down to the earth that conveys

the rich and the poor.

I bow down to the child that will lead

tomorrow and the child that leads

today and the child that must become

an angel because we won’t follow

the children otherwise.

What I stand for is that which

I bow down to:

that which says we’re not done

yet, there’s a lot more to learn

to love.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in Conversations with Mary: Words of Attention and Devotion

Winner of the Nautilus Book Award silver medal for lyrical prose

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The Black Walnut Grove

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

My cabin is nestled in a black walnut grove. The grey-black trees stand tall and firm, like guardians. Their thick branches reach out and around, embracing. Lichen, moss, and vines adorn them in a manner that you’re sure is ceremonial. They are trees and not just trees, like in the way that you know you’ve had dreams that weren’t just dreams. I’m getting to that.

The black walnut is an edge species, meaning that it is neither of the forest nor the field. Its role is not to fit quite in. It’s also considered a pioneer species, meaning that it’s one of the first to show up when a place needs healing. It has been widely regarded for its utility: the dark wood—easily worked as hardwoods go—sap sugars, brown dye from the nut hulls, and nut meat and oil, despite the fact that it is one tough nut to crack. Medicinally, among other things, it has been used to address a wide range of skin and gut issues. 

I think I was in my late twenties when the first part of the dream came to me. I’m pretty sure that it was after my mother’s death. So, I would have been twenty-six, at least.

I was listening to a young woman talk about her stepmother. She was saying that the thing she appreciated most about her was her sense of gratitude. Her stepmother was a deeply grateful person. It was like gratitude was what her stepmother lived on—her breath, her sustenance. The young woman went on to say that when she was a child, she didn’t think much about it; it was just the way her stepmother was. However, as she grew older and began to frequent the edges of adult conversations, she started to learn things about her stepmother’s life before she had become her stepmother. Her stepmother’s life, she learned, had been difficult. At times, very difficult. This surprised her and impacted her deeply. She considered herself lucky. She was well loved and supported. To be truthful, she was quite privileged. If her stepmother could be so grateful despite an affluence of dark days, then certainly she could be more grateful for all that she had. She decided to become a grateful person, like her stepmother.

When I awoke from the dream, I thought it beautiful. It felt bittersweet—like something that exists at the interface of sadness and joy. It couldn’t fully occupy either sentiment, but contained both, actively. I was deeply moved by the thought of what it would be like to impart such a gift to a child, how it could transform a life, how it could transform some aspect of the world. I thought: I’m going to be grateful. I’m going adopt gratitude as a way of living. And, so, I did. Well, I’ve been trying my best, anyway.

The scientific name for the black walnut is Juglans nigra. The tree is literally of the gods; juglans is derived from jovis glans, meaning the nut of Jupiter, the king of the gods. In Autumn, when the leaves are golden and the walnuts begin to crash down on my metal roof, it can feel like the gods are having something of a temper tantrum. Some people hate the trees for this and cut them away from their homes. I learned a long time ago neither to quarrel with nor dismiss the gods. They are usually up to something beyond mortal understanding. Although there has been many a night when the walnuts have awakened me from a deep sleep, a crash, bang, causing me to bolt upright in bed, I adore them still.

I adore them sufficiently to want to grow their company. In large bushel baskets, I collect all of the nuts that fall in the driveway and on the decks. I then walk the thresholds, tossing the nuts to their destiny at the edges of my farm’s woods and meadow, along the stream courses, and at roadside, wherever they will be able to get sufficient moisture and light. If it wasn’t for my appreciation of their company, they wouldn’t be in this holler anymore. Over the decades that preceded my arrival, loggers removed all but my parent grove.

I think I was in my late forties, maybe fifty, when the second part of the dream came to me. It was short. This time, I wasn’t just listening to the story. I was watching the young woman standing behind a podium, speaking into a microphone, telling the story about her stepmother’s gratitude. People were listening. People were feeling. It was a funeral. It was my funeral. I had been the stepmother.

There’s a certain delight that I feel when I look down and, there before me, I see the first few inches of a young walnut sapling making its way into the world.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in RidgeLines: A View of Nature and Human Nature

Winner of the Nautilus Book Award gold medal for lyrical prose

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One Guinea for a Second Look

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

Their presence is unmistakable:

brightly colored, raucous flocks pecking

and dashing in collective frenzy across

dusty ground. They are of the day that

some god manifested, well, I don’t know.

There are brilliant acts of creation and

there are accidents to be learned from.

Is the telling of either entirely truthful?

~

Life often requires us to take a second

glance at the obvious. His brushes thought

they were going to be doing something

ordinary, but they didn’t. As you can see.

They never do. He’s incapable of observing

things in ordinary ways.

The poet, she found herself wondering

about her dark days of awkwardness, there

was cackling, and what a gift they had turned

out to be. And, a word found her: delightful.

~

So, these fowl birds. Let’s look again.

If I focus, I can see the possibility

of beauty in everything.

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From a book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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Close Quarters (One)

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

Things were fine in the nest cavity for awhile.

Specifically, when they were still in their eggs.

But baby birds—these being Northern flickers

of the woodpecker family—grow fast and trees

don’t expand to accommodate. “Move over!”

“You move over!” “Where do you think I can

move to, exactly?” They found some respite

when the weather was good, poking their heads

out from the hole in the swaying pine.  But, oh,

how they wanted to learn to fly so that they

could get away from each other.

“Good riddance!”

~

“Are we there yet?!”

Whenever we made trips to visit the grandparents

my sisters and I would be confined for hours in

the back of Bessie, our white Buick station wagon.

Proximity did not make us closer. No. Quite

the opposite. Space was a limited resource worth

fighting for. “Move over!” “You move over!”

“Where do you think I can move to? Mom!”

Although we didn’t choose to be together, we did,

over time, share in a common antidotal strategy:

“I need to pee!”

~

Find yourself an adult living in a metropolitan

environment and you’ll find yourself using public

transportation. Metro. Bus. It doesn’t matter.

There is a sardine can—that you paid for and rushed

to board—awaiting you and hundreds of strangers

adorned with summer body odor and winter colds.

“Excuse me, could you please move over?” “Huh? No.”

“Where do you think I can move to, exactly?” Ding.

Ding. The door opens wide and it’s every man, woman,

and dragged-by-the-wrist child fleeing, thinking

some form of:

“Oh, thank God for liberty and independence!”

~

It’s not really that funny.

There are seven billion people riding a finite

planet, all of them longing for intimacy.

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From a book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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White Pines

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

My little cabin is in what they call a holler. Here, the sun is slower to arrive than on the ridges. I prefer to meet it there rather than wait on the world’s slow turning. Greeting the day is ritual. No, it is more than that, it is ceremony. The trees know this too, and I think also all those shrubs beneath them and the vines that use them to reach up to the heavens. Like me, climbing these mountains.

Often, the deer watch me, branches as masks. Today, it was a young white pine the doe chose. She didn’t know that I knew the fawn was beside her, low in the dry stream bed, but I did. They walked on together and I, alone. What do I make of the rabbits in the grassy meadows? How are there so many, so complacent? Isn’t this fox-certainty, coyote-certainty wonderful in the way that it teaches gratitude for clover and love of a moment?

Back to the white pine. There aren’t many here. Not tall. Not dense. Mostly, they are young and spindly. It’s like the artist had forgotten them and then suddenly said, “Oh, pines! There must be pines.” Then he—or she—fit them into the remaining spaces because they are deserving. Five long needles each, that’s how I know they are white pines. Of course, there are also the memories of buying them—white pines—for the dozen Christmases we were something called a family.

Once—well more than once—I sat with glorious children on a faraway mountain watching the sunset and the stars arrive, confident and twinkling. We counted them in three languages and sang songs that these same stars had taught their ancestors out of necessity. I don’t remember the words, but I remember the laughter and how the night sky was caught up in their eyes. They didn’t know darkness like I know darkness. I prayed they never would.

A walk isn’t finished until the walker has acknowledged at least one great vulnerability and discovered something to be grateful for. I’m not talking about the pines. I am saying that maybe we should be more like artists, rabbits, and our ancestors’ children.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in "Conversations with Mary: Words of Attention and Devotion"

Winner of the Nautilus Book Award gold medal for poetry

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What's the Vision?

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

What’s the vision? What do you want so see?

What happens when there isn’t an answer?

What happens when you’ve lost the trail

and your sense of destiny?

If you don’t like it, that’s fine. I don’t like it either,

some things need to change, but resistance isn’t

an agent, it’s one act. If you stop something from

going there, you need to decide where you want

it to go instead. Where? Where are we going

instead?

Sometimes things need to fall apart. I do sometimes.

It’s the only way to let go and grow. Ask the caterpillars

on the wilting pipevine or the tadpole in the puddle on

the hottest day of the year. Something beckons for

an ending that’s worth all the risks in the world. There’s

another form to be instead.

What’s the vision? What do you want so see?

What happens when there isn’t an answer?

What happens when you’ve lost the trail

and your sense of destiny?

I hear your anger and frustration. I hear the silence

of overwhelm. I hear your pleading for this to stop,

for it to go away. And, that’s okay. No is a worthy

word when its time has justly come. But, yes must

know where and when to arrive and how to map

the way, somewhere.

What’s the vision? What do you want so see?

What happens when there isn’t an answer?

What happens when you’ve lost the trail and

your sense of destiny?

I’ve been listening for an answer, but no one seems

to know that there’s a question. I see you standing

up. I see you sitting down. I see you lying in the way.

Good! And, then? Where are we going? Where are

all of us going? How do we play follow the leader

like this? It’s not the way I remember.

What’s the vision? What do you want so see?

What happens when there isn’t an answer?

What happens when you’ve lost the trail and

your sense of destiny?

What’s the vision? What do you want so see?

What happens when there isn’t an answer?

What happens when you’ve lost the trail and

your sense of destiny?

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From "The Song Book" (a work in progress)

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A Day Not As Planned

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I had planned accordingly, been

willing to commit body and mind

to the long list, but:

At the farmers’ market there

were familiar faces with names

I know, words to exchange

about possibilities and how the

rain has made the eggplant

grow larger than anticipated or

desired. Communing takes time,

especially when hugs are involved

and here they are, most certainly.

There were turtles: two.

One in a puddle in my driveway

with a nasty infection that needed

tending, so I drove him all the way

over the mountain to vets who

understand that all beings are worthy,

And the other spinning on its back

just west of the yellow lines. Though

I stopped, hopeful, there was nothing

left to do but offer prayers and a

ramshackle body to something that

might show up, hungry, in the roadside

shrubbery. It wasn’t joyful, but it

called for time.

And, I had to fix a watch that broke

in the night. Two in two months!

I think the Universe is trying to tell

me something, but what could it

be?

So then, just as I was going to get back

to the list, a friend said, “Come by!”

And, I did, and we sat for a bit

contemplating how every act can be

a perfect act. What an interesting day,

I thought. I’m perfectly accomplishing

nothing.

But, as the light dimmed and the temperature

became more cordial, I thought now, now

I’ll get something done. It was then

that I realized the day had written a poem

and it was going to need some time.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

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A Summer Moment

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Summer resides at the confluence

of rushing to be and utter stillness.

We must bloom. We must rest.

And, at some point, there is

a moment in which blooming

and resting are indistinguishable.

Our lives have summers.

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser

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

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Summer: Day One

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

That old stray dog, Grief, had been following

at my heels, hoping for a home in which to

rest his weary self, but today is the first day

of summer and he’s gone off somewhere.

Still, there’s plenty of company for me. It seems

that everything is a breathing thing, in some

way of breathing. Me too, finally.

What color is summer?

What does summer smell like?

And, sound?

I know its touch: humidity.

You’ll never hear me complain about that

beaded caress. I wonder how anyone could go

on alone in a world in which even the air offers

an unmistakable embrace.

So, this is it, I suppose, the beginning of this year’s

expression of Joy: nectar-sweet shades of red

exclaimed. She is scampering along, leading

the way.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

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Cherry Gobbler

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

If you live where bears live, like I do,

you learn to look up to them. That is to say

that you learn to respect them, yes. But

it is also to say that you learn that they

are up there, high in the canopy, on thin

limbs, fattening themselves on sweetness.

Once I was hiking on a mountain ridgetop

and a cherry tree, it seemed, threw four black

bears at me: a momma and her triplets. Crash,

bang, boom, and boom again. It seemed like

a ridiculous moment and, so, I laughed as

they scampered away in great bewilderment

of my sudden, and it must have seemed

dangerous, arrival.

I called out: “If you’d stayed in the tree, I

wouldn’t have known you were here!” It

seemed like they needed to be informed

of the obvious.

And, so, that was the moment when I learned

to look up to bears.

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From a book collaboration in progress with artist Mark Collins

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Faith (Two)

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

We are born onto this earth

of body. None of us has our

feet beneath us. When the

time comes to stand, there

arises the expectation that

we will wobble on shaky legs,

stumble, and fall. And, too

that we will regain our footing

for the next step. There

arrives faith. Unknowingly,

it is ours.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

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

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