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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