The Blind Alchemist

To my bro Phil, may you continue to create.

Your flask swells and empties, unbidden-
the chaotic ebb interrupts your private work.
From your tower  you peer through blue light,
eyes closed to dust, yet your mind soars:
an eagle unfolding into the ocean of sky,
rapturous and fulfilled.

Like lightning hitting earth,
Your hunger is for truth, insatiable,
fed by the abundant earth.
Your magic brings you bread and praise-
you know not lack, only excess.

Half poet, half scientist,
your rigor and wonder are both boon and curse.
You long to ground the spirit in matter,
to marry heaven’s formula with earth’s pulse.

Your charts are manic, your plans obsessive,
every calculation an act of eros
Yet each operation fails its balance,
something always skewed in the weighing.
If only you had eyes not only for the sky
but for the mirrors beneath your feet.

You tighten your rules,
seek salvation in severity.
But flagellation is just another experiment-
a false objectivity that comforts the wound.

You must learn to let go, deatch,
No need for merging, only balance.
Every failed reaction is a step toward the stone.
Quell your fire in the pool of temperance;
see with the eyes of earth as well as sky.

Then-
like an eagle reborn from ash and mercury-
soar, this time not to escape,
but to remember where you stand.