My Premier Alchemist

I call upon my premier
alchemist again – and hope
he won’t be as disturbed
as he was when I last
implored him to attend
to the perturbing business

of appending lines to paper
with his plume-y magic
pen: again I watch him
tend to his abstruse
hypotheses and learned
certainties supposed

to govern how to coax
his colors into heeding him,
sensitively frowning,
gauging every stage – but
still he cannot keep the lines
from floating off the page.

.