the alchemist

my dream of dreamy parallelism
will go on forever
during's sad and happy secret
creating a history of holidays
to live by

and there are images for this:
two candles beneath the stairway
or a fruit tree on a mountaintop in a storm
but these necessitate some angle
and this is not about angles

this is about the truth
laid down like train tracks
about steam, electricity, and in a sense
the limits of metaphor

because when clues decide
it's their insides that matter
they flower more than flowers
they extrapolate

so if this poem seems errant, loose
remember there are whole layers of dark
beneath every weathered word
 
and to write in lightning is to invite disaster
meaning footsteps have steps too
so why not try honesty

if you give enough anything will glow
whatever its sign or season

since each new beginning is a new image:
an unthinkable tortoise, a sleepy somehow

a snowfall

a curio.


Previously published by Becoming Journal.