The Alchemist’s Reverie: A Moment’s Breath
Where tinctures gleamed like stars in earthen vials,
There dwelt a Weaver of the Faint Embrace—
Créateur de moments, bathed in gentle trials.
His fingers danced o’er vessels thin and rare,
And whispers came as vapors kissed his gaze,
A symphony of time, dissolving air,
In Laboratoire where dream and truth appraise.
Not wrought of gold nor mere material blend,
His alchemy pursued what none may hold:
The fleeting pulse where perfect breaths suspend,
A fragile flash too swift for tale be told.
Each dawn he sought to trap the evanescent,
That subtle seed of beauty, bright and brief,
Embroidered soft with mortal’s own descent,
Yet richer than the longest woven leaf.
He called himself the Artisan of Light,
A crafter wrought of careful yearning’s flame,
Whose chalice brimmed with twilight’s waning might,
And folded grief into the hour’s name.
With glass and smoke, with sighs and silent muse,
He sought the spark that weds the soul to day,
A blossom born to fade, yet never lose
Its essence in the darkened march away.
“Behold,” he murmured, “in this fleeting gleam,
The mirror of our mortal coil’s own face—
A moment’s breath, a glimpse beyond life’s seam,
Ephémérité, time’s elusive lace.”
His thoughts like threads of silver, taut and fine,
Entwined the sorrow dwelling in earth’s heart,
And wove a tapestry of fragile line,
Where loss and beauty danced, not torn apart.
Yet nights were long, and silence hung like frost,
His dreams a chalice full of shadowed haze,
Where echoes of what might be or had been lost
Clung softly to the edges of his gaze.
“Why seek to bind what slips through grasp and grip?
Why forge from smoke a relic of the dawn?
Is not the soul made richer by its trip—
A pilgrimage to where all light is gone?”
He paused, the amber flame before him low,
The alchemy of absence drawing near,
A solitude profound did inward grow,
And whispered truths that only hearts might hear.
“A moment is a petal torn from spring,
A spark that shivers in perpetual flight;
To hold it close—an ever trembling thing—
Yet in that tremor shines eternal light.”
One eve, beneath the argent gaze of stars,
A shadow came—a visitor unseen—
Not flesh nor breath, but forged of silent scars,
A question dwelling where the soul had been.
It spoke in silence, pressing on his dreams,
A riddle old as dawn and dusk conjoined:
“Creator, what is life but fragile streams—
Whose waters fade before the banks are joined?”
He answered not with haste but measured thought,
For in the silence stirred a deeper song,
A melody of moments dearly caught,
Yet ever slipping past the will of strong.
“To craft a moment is to touch the flame
That flickers on the edge of night and day;
Though brief and faint, it bears no need for name,
For in its vanishing, it shows the way.”
His hands then traced a circle in the air,
A symbol wrought of both desire and doubt,
A halo spun from longing and despair,
Where absence and presence walked about.
The room grew bright—then darkened like a breath—
As if the liminal had stepped within,
Poised at the threshold of life, love, and death,
Where stories end and others yet begin.
And in that dim-lit space between the hours,
He glimpsed a vast expanse of endless seas,
A shifting dance of petals, leaves, and flowers,
All tales entwined within the fated breeze.
Were these the moments he had failed to hold?
Or were they seeds of future’s tender bloom?
The past—and yet the future—thus unrolled
Within the quiet sanctum of his room.
Oft did he wonder if the art he wrought,
Though wrought with care of heart and patient time,
Could bind the evanescence dearly sought,
Or was it but a transient, whispered rhyme?
Yet still he worked, beneath the waxing moon,
Each fleeting breath a jewel to procure,
For in the quest, however brief the boon,
Lay meaning deep and poignantly pure.
And so the days unfurled their fragile wings,
The alchemist—dreamer poised in command—
Bore forth his moments summoned from unseen springs,
Like oil on water, shimmering and grand.
No mortal grasp could hold these sparks of air,
Yet he, the Creator, cherished their light:
Each vanished instant, tender, bright, and rare,
Was victory wrested softly from the night.
His heart—a vessel brimming with desire,
Knew well the ache of things that cannot last;
Yet even in the fleeting’s fleeting fire,
A truth endured, defiant and steadfast.
For life is not the span, but how it gleams—
A dance upon the fragile edge of time—
A chorus sung in many muted themes,
A fleeting, radiant, and endless rhyme.
When dawn would spill its honeyed hues anew,
He oft would smile with quiet, wistful grace,
A seeker holding glimpses, faint but true,
In time’s vast ocean, no one’s dwelling place.
And though the moments vanished like the mist,
Their gentle echo lingered in his gaze;
A testament that love and hope persist,
Though shaped by time’s unyielding, wandering maze.
The chamber waits in silence, ever still,
Its glass and flames bereft of mortal touch,
Yet somewhere, in the realms of night’s soft thrill,
He crafts anew his moments, tender, much.
For in the quest lies infinite desire—
Not to confine, but freely to release—
A truth that sings beyond the fleeting fire:
The journey’s path itself is every peace.
So lingers there, unspoken, yet profound,
The alchemist’s enigma, half-unseen:
That life, though passing swift without a sound,
Is etched eternal in the spaces between.
No end defined, no closure strictly shown—
A mystery that like a river flows,
Inviting hearts to walk the path alone,
And find in evanescence life’s repose.
