The Lady’s Slippers at Goose Pond

I’m not sure if beauty holds a place,
or if a place holds beauty.

Unless, we are talking of a soul
as a place,
and then I know both
to be true:

Beauty roots us in this earth.
In beauty we are found.

I met her at the junction
of a woodland trail and an old country
road that winded up the mountain.
I never went to where.

She was in the company of dogs,
a shaggy lot of big ones
in the back of an old pick up.
I petted each,
accepting the warm drool as one
should accept joy whenever,
wherever, and however it presents
itself to us.

I was coming from Goose Pond.
It was her special place.

It was May.

The lady’s slippers were in bloom.
Dark pink ones. Bulbous. Capillaried.
Exuberant. Brazen.

“Don’t be shy!” they say.
“The feminine is sacred.

Here I am:
beauty.
And, here you are:
beauty.”

She and I didn’t say a thing
about it. Middle-aged women standing
next to a dark-water pond among orchids
and ferns don’t need to.

The secret is in being of the place,

as if you always have been.

At Goose Pond pairs of broad,
spring-green leaves splay out across
the oak and hickory the leaflitter,
life always touching what was. And this
is what I’ll remember of our first meeting
in the moments of our parting, when
your body returns to the earth and your
soul goes on in search of yet more beauty,
and we still of a place keep being held
by beautiful memories of you,

out there:

a splendid ephemeral
that we’ll find ourselves longing
to see again
when the time is right.

— Jamie K. Reaser
In memory of Judy West