Written in response to something a dear friend said to me last winter. What she saw in me, that kindness and love inspired me to write this. And in writing I realised it was a universal truth, so I brought to our mentoring sessions.

Caspar

Black Seam

You have a seam of gold running through you

I see it

I think you don’t, not always

Once Never

But maybe now more, day by day, I think you see it

The black coal in the seam.

The fire mineral

Layers of it

Deep in the earth

Thick dense, heavy, ready to burn

And you love mining for that black, always have

Your ferocious reflective, reflexive axe, hacking into the belly of the earth

Over and over, never blunting the point of it

So deep it hits the mineral seam and a white diamond of sparks fly

And flames flicker as they always do

From the black, through the earth airless earth

To rise up

An underground fire

Catching roots and worms and bones alight with farenheight

Setting them ablaze for alchemy

I think you see it

Through the black

And I see something else

A seam of gold running through you, through that black

Through random rising fire

Something else

I think you don’t

Once never, now more

In this room, in each of your medusa eyes

Now more than ever

A seam of gold running through you

Mine it

Caspar Walsh