sweethearts,
garden tools,
and once a glassy-eyed herring gull
whose right wing (or was it left?)
lay beside him,
on a cold slab of cement,
tethered to his shoulder
by a single,
dry
strand of tendon.
I took his last breath from him
and, decades later,
still keep it safe in a secret chamber
of my heart.

What of this fabricated world?

While I do hear the despairing mouths
and carpal tunneled-hands
screaming of its rather
inconvenient brokenness,

I will admit:

I take a certain comfort in its undoing;

I’ve never known an act of severance
to be anything less than a new beginning.

I did, after all, leave my mother’s womb
and our singular identity
and I became someone else entirely.

Oh, yes, I too could partner up with fear
and be all the rage at parties,
but,

And maybe my age is starting to show,

I prefer to sit, alone, on the blunt edge of a
fog-pressed mountain and
be transfixed by wonderment.

Perhaps I am as odd as they say,

for I often look upon decaying things
and take joy in the questions that
arrive
like shimmering carrion beetles.

Questions and beetles,
and their alchemy.

What will become of us?
You’ve probably asked this question.

What do I have to offer?
But, perhaps, not this one.

I like questions;

They are like double-winged birds scratching
at scattered seeds
among ashes.

Only when the questions die
will I lose faith
in what cannot be mended.

© 2014-2016/Jamie K. Reaser
From “Wonderment: New and Selected Poems”
A work in progress
Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser.