Alchemisland

We descend grim hills

Slate tests our shoe grips

Kills our knees and shins 

Whipping winds tear our shirts, sent us widdershins 

We are shivering when we arrive in

We have tasted monastic meads 

We have stalked Asphodel fields

We have steeled ourselves at tempters

We have avoided usurers and lenders 

Rule benders and fiend attenders

Oft meant to lend us endings tender 

We held you tighter, until they were rendered 

As dreams upon waking, ruefully sent off

Pent up prayers leave us like winter leaves do trees, upon our knees giving thanks to please, our pleas his decrees

By degrees coming down that slope’s lee, toward mounded scree

Sensing nearing freedom we were like lambs ag spraoi in the field come Spring

We approach the stream whose spring we sourced nearer summit, we have walked from winter into summer as in dreams

He leans over the water, my partner, like a Narcissus 

Scoops mouthfuls, his hand dishes out slakings, tissues dry our mouths

We preen like swan sisters, bathing our traveller’s blisters 

With delight whistling, rolling like lovers trysting about mountain heather and hyacinth

In a leather satchel I had kept us both a capful of delightful apple cider

Horse to rider we took to it, until its total was inside us making us wider

Our smiles grew wider, our eyes wilder

Our prize in sight, who could be miser 

Surmising our imminent arrival, we shall soon thrive we thought

Until now we were not alive 

With extra drive we walked extra miles

Our piled high packs felt light as flies. 

---

We could describe it if you would not call it lies, such slights cause us to hide light

At this height we ran between sliding and fighting for our lives, grasping branches to the side which side swiped our eyes otherwise

Briars which were devils in disguise barbed our disguises and laid bare our guises 

Gashed our ankles until blood there geysered 

Nothing could dampen what happened inside us, not just cider 

Something diviner.

---

During our lengthy perambulations 

We saw humanity at every station

His every permutation 

Life sates itself in many ways

We have made our pilgrim progress to the city of enrichment 

Our parchments checked, our forms frisked, we are ushered in with a wrist flick 

Even old horses kick 

Even dead bees prick

Here they pile a million bricks

No more wiley to his tricks  

The fiend, they say, does not exist.