Alchemisland

Forth from furrow with force, expansive gorse spanned with stabbing thorns

White roses in bright rows like light workers reposed in votive poesy, Yorksworn

Beautiful under any name but all beauty sporting thorns, the horns of Cernunnos

Discerned in the torn, worn, crumpled, wrinkled workwear of the gardener Herne Hunter

Employed here since he was a hundred, he says he remembers before London

He claims another name, that of Fintan Mac Bucra, who swam Noah’s flood in fish form 

Moab to Malin head those dreaded watchers stretched, all betwixt in brine were dead, forlorn

They await the morning of the dove’s flight, the return of light in a promissory rainbow delightful

A tapering tunnel of ripping bramble sworling vorpally, a forest floor void avoided even by moles

Going low like a vole with noseholes jailing toadscent, looking down the runnel

Wondering could anyone mortal pass here, where a lowly rat stoops to pass

Where even bodiless light must squeeze to find ease, and ‘fore succeeding must repass

Taking canine posture with the poise of a boxer, one may find a way, though it is boxy

Thorns bandit cloth as if they were a poxy epoxy, appox on thee one is bidden to scream

By way of release, finally that circlet of trees has its surcease, the garden’s leeside.