Alchemisland

One foot wrong and I’m gone.

We’ve absconded the built’s mettle-wilting favours

Traded laziness for the bilge, the thicket, and its perspirant labours.

The river long, robed in fog, laughs longest as it rolls along; wet comet.

Solid-seeming silt paths circuit the sides

Boglike they give what inspires fires, but what sinks inside dies, tithes.

Wilting branches under bloom’s flighty influence

Sink eventually to wateredge, lending fluid floral dye

So that the water rushing alongside

Appears one minute dun cow, then magpied,

Then yellow as banana rind the next mile

Dazzling therewith any eye daring that width.

Unmapped, unstraddled

Ill-fashioned for the gnashed feeding hand of man.

Every harried forward inch,

By crook or by spaded pasteboard paddle, embattled.

By riling nature. All hateful genitures there resplendent:

Stinging rattler and tattler and mimic and siren.