Page from the Emerald Tablet

Page from the Emerald Tablet

I dream of dust

old, dry, glittering

in a glass animal eye

brimmed with rheumy

flecks of other worlds

fields of forgotten flowers

now dessicated mica

life’s shed substance

abraded on the lathe

cut on the ripsaw

sanded smooth.

I sweep up

my dream dust

with the softest

brush of morning,

mindful of each atomically

weighted speck, carry it

across a tightrope 

of my own

cleverly braided skin

teetering, knowing

nothing can fall.

Into the mold it goes,

the crucible over the

flame of loss begins to heat;

the glass tubes

chatter against the

heart’s empty alembic

a hot green boiling

filtering this spagyric mist.

Past present future

uncombine and melt,

float to ash

sulphur salt and mercury

fire earth and water;

take this simple marigold

make it honeysuckle and amber,

labdanum and pearl.

Turn its sallow safron to softened gold

its sharp viridian to the colorless serum

that weeps from a closing wound. Oh,

flush these bitter salts to fragrant musk

and back again to an animate silver,

the radiant water of life.

 

December 2011

Posted for    Open Link Night    at dVerse Poets Pub

Process Notes: (Almost as long as the poem!) from wikipedia: “The Emerald Tablet, also known as Smaragdine Table, Tabula Smaragdina, or The Secret of Hermes, is a text purporting to reveal the secret of the primordial substance and its transmutations. It claims to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus ("Hermes the Thrice-Greatest"), a legendary Hellenistic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth…” It contains the famously ambiguous phrase, in Isaac Newton’s translation:“That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.”

 ~The word spagyric is derived from the Greek  Spao, to tear open, + ageiro, to collect and can be synonymous with alchemy, but in more modern usage refers to an herbal medicine distilled from calcined ashes.
~In the language of flowers, the marigold symbolizes grief and loss, honeysuckle, devoted affection and love.

~Labdanum is a product of the rockrose used in the perfume industry to simulate the odor of musk found in ambergris, which in turn is used to simulate the fragrance of burned amber. 

~‘Aqua vitea,’ the water of life, was a strong concoction of alcoholic spirits often prepared by alchemists in their experiments in distillation, but also had a spiritual significance as the redemptive waters of baptism and faith.