Transmutation Poem by Mark Hamilton

This coffee is like a miracle:
oil-slick black,
thick as night,
a transmutation of water
which has journeyed through deep earth
to emerge, by a secret ministry,
worlds different from before.

Water has lifted out the spirit of the grounds.
They brood together now, darkly locked,
held by a spell that cannot
be reversed.

I drink:
its force is a kick,
a slap of the sea
in a cave,
lapping its secrets of ocean.

I wreathe it round with the burning
of tobacco:
leaf turns to flame turns
to smoke,
rising like an offering,
winnowing
up…

It stirs in me - like crystals of sugar
revolving, dissolving -
a cry for transmutation.

My body and my mind are soothed,
are roused - strangely both -
but what can reach my spirit?

The wind rattles at the window,
there is a stirring abroad…

God, or spirit, or presence,
how can I pass my spirit through you,
fuse myself into something new?

Like coffee, like smoke, I cry,
transmute my spirit too.