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The Alchemist | A Song



Two decades ago, I was a musician and I wrote this song. It has been my friend’s favourite for ten years and she asked me the other day to send her the lyrics. So I dug them up, and discovered I’d written a rather literal prophecy for my life.


As it happens, I’ve gone around the world since this song and am back in the place where I was when I wrote it. You could say back where I started. Which makes the song happy. It’s a sucker for a good full-circle. ☀️🌊🏝💦🌬


Today, giant snow flakes have moved in with the wind outside my window. and I live with, as well as under, three layers of velvety blanket.





The Alchemist Erin Clark


I asked him to take me

by some other way

than through my intellect


reveal to me why life

has a way of

making you burn for it


he said we need the fire to perfect

we are his gold things

he is an alchemist

in a past life when i lived with the sun.


after the sun, I became the sea

every restless wave and violent tide

betrayed a depth I’d rather hide


eventually the smashing smoothed

and the vastness

meditated me

and now I crave

the penetrating


once my constraints had lifted me

the praise was ravishing


I washed myself onto the shore

and the sand there gave me

this form


I lay in my mother’s cool grasses

I learned about how time passes

she whispered into me

a rolling pulse


her affection shatters

as it reflects

I was breathless

and beating

when I had flesh


one day the air was like a bath

it tasted like green

and when I breathed

it stuck to my teeth


I asked if it knew about the melting

all the light was dull

like a thumb had smudged all the day’s ink


and the heat was so heavy

I could feel it remembering me


air offered to carry me around

that’s when I moved in with the wind

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