Fortified with Spirits

By Aeddon Cayea

My footfalls offer lonely retort here,

Where washed-out bricks bear forth wan echoes out,

For an audience absent, save their doubt.

Fog-borne fiends whisper to chide, candle clear.

Growing cold claws my skin, digs into my chest,

Like a child crying for mother’s teat,

Slinks ‘neath the cover of my marching beat.

A rogue, working toward its hoary conquest

So, I warm my limbs and my falt’ring heart,

Behind a stagg’ring, swagg’ring red-faced mask;

The glorious Rubedo of the flask,

Wedded to these waters from end to start

Enflamed in spirit and dissolved in flesh,

With each sip, I am made sacred afresh