The Jaguar's Bite

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Mayan relief from Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico

The jaguar gripped my hand

in his wet and gnashing mouth.

Wounds are mysterious things;

How they can speak out so long

and loud

after new skin and new stories

tuck them

out of sight…

Sometimes it’s hard to put a

name to the old voice,

Mostly because there are so

many options:

Shame, grief, despair, anger, rage,

Fear…

But it is a growl that is recognizable –

in the ear of memory,

or the pit of the stomach.

And, in the last breath of an addict,

the jingle of prison cell keys,

the door slamming on bruised and beaten hearts,

the moment that innocence is stolen.

And, in all the self-betrayals.

In every act of prey turned predator.

Unlike other cats, jaguars kill

with a bite to the head.

When he takes you by the hand,

it’s an invitation to go

to where you have always

had an invitation to go –

Where Light’s canine teeth

pierce

the Darkness.

It is here where wounds become

Sacred Wounds.

It is here where artists make vows to beauty,

musicians become composers,

poets transform poems into prayers,

prayers become a way of walking,

and the body begins to understand Love.

It is here where poison becomes medicine.

Follow this path,

this path,

though it twists and turns sharply downward,

though it leads to the lair

of everything you have been avoiding…

for a long, long time.

Follow this path,

though you realize:

You’ve already been here.

This is the cave of your dreams.

Yes, yes!

All those nightmares were

perfectly inscribed love notes

from the lily-scented Underworld,

always beckoning you to claim the

potential of this place,

Calling on you to honor

your blood –

The red thread embroidering

the edges of the tapestry

in which past, present, and future

are continuously being

woven together

in a circle.

Back to the jaguar:

I have found him to be a trusty guide.

And, odd as it may seem,

thanked him for the bite.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

Published in 'Wild Life: New and Selected Poems' 

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The Woodpecker

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

The world needs drummers,

And hollow trees

need to speak of the lives

they have lived.

Listen carefully

for the pause,

that faint collection of seconds when the

resistant insect is extracted and swallowed…

just before the story begins again,

and Death smiles at his own cleverness.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser 
Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (www.hiraethpress.com)

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The Mark

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

At first I wanted to hide them

from the hunters;

These four tawny brown, 

horizontal slashes

with their shreds and peels of

old black birch bark

in which a late-wandering

black bear had written,

“I am here!”

I often keep secrets of the

forest folk,

especially this time of year.

“Shhhhhh!” I wanted to say.

“Shhhhh! These people,

drunk on sorrows

and looking for retaliation for

wounds you didn’t place,

seek to kill you.

These people have forgotten

the proper way

to take medicine.”

But when the rust-gnarled

pickup approached,

thundering down the mountain

slope, throwing twisting red

dust clouds

into the chilled air,

I stepped beside the tree,

and stood, plainly,

at the edge of the road.

You see:

In a split second, I had re-membered

what it is to be human.

You see:

In each one of us

is a deep desire

to leave a mark.

You see:

The one true mark you are

uniquely here to leave

necessitates that you risk

your life in being seen.

The courageous and

the sacred fools

make their mark anyway.

They make their mark anyway

because choosing to be

vulnerable

is our human medicine.

I smiled and waved to these

strangers on the Ridge.

You see:

I wanted to let them know

that they’d been fully seen.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" (www.hiraethpress.com)

Thin Ice

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

There is always one winter morning

that is the first winter morning

for ice on the pond.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to those

who have lived decades

in the north next to still water,

But, for me, it still remains a wonderment,

an ordinary miracle made possible

by elements conspiring

to wake us with befuddling

predictability.

We have a ritual,

this particular winter morning

and I.

I wait for the sunlight to come,

anticipating the spectrum of colors

dancing among the gas bubbles

trapped in the glassy-crust.

And when it does come,

memory transports me back to my youth:

I am watching small wall-rainbows emerging from

crystalline prisms hanging from lamps

in a home that we once thought

was quiet and tender.

And then I’m in my teens:

The minister arose and ventured

onto the frozen reservoir,

and with the confident stride of a

once-Olympic skater,

drove forward until he found a place

thin enough to free him

of this world.

The imaginary me has stood,

for many a winter,

at the gaping hole left by his

sinking body,

asking questions about beliefs

and vows

and faith.

Now older, I focus on the red-spotted

newts and the snapping turtles moving

in the cold waters below the ice:

No one ever told me they could.

By the rules I was taught,

they can’t.

But they are.

They are there shuffling their thick legs

and looking, golden-eyed, back at me

with not a glint of surprise.

I love this ice, thin as it is.

It reminds me that 
that which can be readily explained 

is sometimes

best left

to wonderment.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Wonderment: New and Selected Poems" (a work in progress)

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The Last Full Moon

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

She beckoned me
to come to her
in silence.

She was radiant, glowing
and I was eager to lap at
her with a poet’s tongue.

But, no.

There was something else.

Something that reminded me of
my grandmother,

Pale and cold-bodied,
lying there,
dead,
in a viewing coffin

in a room frenetic with
stillness.

It took only seconds to realize:

Air thick with the essence
of ‘Goodbye’ ~

Ahh. Yes.

And then I knew:

She, as we have known Her,
was leaving us.

In This Time,
she would be the last 
full moon.

There is a reverence for Elders
that can split a heart open
when it arrives
from the humble depths
of soul.

Oh how I felt it,
and am feeling it still.

Silence.

It’s for everything ~

Everything,
 
that is too important to say.

© 2012-2013/Jamie K. Reaser