When the shadows look to you like sheets
of tin and the light like sodium flame,
you’ll know even God is an alchemist.
One day, we’ll discover a planet
where the rain is made of glass,
and we’ll remember that everything
shares constituent parts, materia prima.
I have the makings of glass, of earth,
in the fist of my heart. I have a soul
of gold, and gold a core of blood.
Making art is the making of galaxies,
the astronomy below. But transmutation
is a cathedral where the spirit learns
its true nature, the hand of God
the philosopher’s stone making us glow
bright and fervid as stars because we are
stars, and all we need is a catalyst
to reveal our common, our hidden, glory.
BRIANNA NOLL is the author of The Price of Scarlet, selected by Lisa Williams as the inaugural poetry collection in the University Press of Kentucky's New Poetry and Prose Series. She is Poetry Editor of The Account, which she helped found, and her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, and Crazyhorse.
Latest posts by Brianna Noll (see all)
- Perenelle Flamel Contemplates the Cosmos - December 11, 2017
