Alchemisland

E’en shaved close the once-clothed foliate face of the woodsman’s place

Bore the taint of embrace

Pockmarked, far-reaching tattoos old ivy produced

Shades of was-bark.

Of that place’s wick-ignorant, witch-busy nights

Many passers by, if they slowed to admire the sky

Reported having felt some dispelling or disarming starkness.

Oft moons harkened until sparks abused darkness yet heard nothing move

Armless trees marooned in middlemost being as mine-shorn men must be

A road purposefully hard to follow, beyond the slickness of the fang’s face

A natural hollow where vanquished creatures yet remained

From man’s sight estranged since ancient aeon, yet here ranged

Some pecuilarity of its makeup sustained the ancient Jacobs

Beyond their time upon the stage. The belt-testing girth of their remit

Unnerved us, who struggled to read further back than Remus

Much greenness but freed of trees by the shovel of God’s keenness

Strange given that Ent-paraded range’s resounding thickness

For it seemed that every leafed seed there abounded, and grew

Speedily as bounding hounds whose scent is found

One might range far, e’en until an age departed

Without sighting this subtle glade

Where their craven religion started

A grave quiet, which remarked more than any gothic marker hung as ward.

His graven displeasure, their forever Lord

His altar laden, wavebreast ere his pleasure

Flies and metal-melting fires consumed his rightful flesh

A man’s viciousness made his measure

An Angel warned me

Place no brawn on the fraying tether tying you to Heaven

Thereby forbade me from the nether.