Bring to boil the pot and kettle Cut the leaves and small trees Leave behind the harsh reality And extract the essence. Sit and toil with molten metal Push and heave, reach in and seize Heave forward with gloves on, a finality And react to the lesson. Wipe the sweat from your brow And the cinders from your chest Put down the half-shaped tool into the cool blue water. The hot water is ready now And the green is at your behest Don’t weep for nature, only a fool would weep for something so beautiful. As the green dissolves in the bubbling mixture Becoming one with its own, and more than it was As the dulled grey steel gives way to its cause, Dry and dead born into new life in boiling heat Cold and blunt, once with no shape, now molded with pointed purpose ends it’s journey in steam to freeze. Immutable things, a life lived ends, they can go no further until they are picked up with careful hands And taken to the table where new life begins. Transmutable dreams, where life goes depends, Nature has its way with the grey and the green But nature can be understood and those hands see them through their final elemental journey For where life closes its eyes, blind at the end The Alchemist sees.