The Alchemist Discovers a Universal Solvent
by Bruce Boston

When the moment

nicks my consciousness

keen as a dagger's edge,

 

fast as the laws allow,

more silent than

the elasticity of bone,

 

I cross the continuum

and stand beside myself

with senses flaming

 

and body turned to stone.

For one fractured instant

sand hangs in the glass,

 

the breath of the forest

catches in its limbs,

a slice of the natural

 

and relative universe

is stretched on the block

with light suspended:

 

a still life taut

on the lip of a dream,

until the moment turns

 

and thought is upended.

The forest shakes itself

and time reassumes

 

its interminable ticking,

the steady dissolution

of all it subsumes. 

-----
Appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine

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