Streams Of Whisky

A modern twist of mine on the old water nymph love story. It's a little longish... (2000+ words) Enjoy!


In olden days the spriteful babe
Frolicked in forest, field and fen,
But times have changed and fields have changed,
Til even mighty Zeus has fled.
Yet his licentious progeny
Born and birthed of his same seed
Survives beside the quiet stream.
But times have changed and streams have changed
And while still flowing to the sea,
The Nymphs who once had called them home
No longer frolic to the sea.

The flows have lost their mystery
As Hephaestus' grown children
And Pandora, mother and bride,
Have taken o'er fair Olympus
And made of the heavens a mall.
Oh how sacrilege has defiled
The pint glass and wine's decanter
And drowned Dionysus' joy
In the doldrum of the nine-to-five
Or the bartender's six-to-close.
But not all the old ones are lost;
The stubborn and the clever ones;
The far-sighted and the blind ones
Have made anew their wayward homes.
Hermes, Lord of the Chat Client
And psycho-pomp of 404
Still hides among HTTP.
Behold Hestia's now cold hearth
(Who has a hearth now anyway?)
And look to her new HD home.
But the nymphs who e'er found delight
Midst the likes of mortal or god
Survive still, and perhaps least changed.
These wry spirits found new homes
In this world post-Persephone;
And frail Demeter's GMOs.
The woodland nymphs with woodlands gone
Moved on to hops and yeast and vine,
Whilst ocean maids rode current tides
To claim soda and coffee line.
But perhaps wisest of all
Were the nymphs of river and stream
Who dwell on in distilleries.
From every continent they hail
To enchant, delight and trouble
The wide seas of earthbound Man.
Tequila's girl; agave queen,
Sultry wench with a chase of lime
Aids and abets the naked floor.
And there, Vodka's Vasilisa,
Cold and clear, quick cheater of death
Through the pale heart of white winter.
See Rum, the pirate's maid and dream;
Sweet sound of a blunderbuss
And gentle rocker of the seas.
Fair Moonshine, bold moonshiner's dare,
Nymph of the American wood
Who knocks you over the head
And knocks you clear out of your socks.
But best and most beautiful,
Is Scotland's girl: Ireland's lass,
The auburn headed whisky stream;
Warm lover with a wild temper
And kindest spirit of them all.
One such maiden, one liquor nymph
More playful and more care-free
Than the rest of her spirit kin
Is she who would beget this tale.
One fair day as she frolicked 'round
The casks, the stills and bottles,
This fleet-footed maid of fancy
Fell into an open bottle
And was trapped as the cork slammed home.
How woefully she fought the glass!
How she railed against the cork and seal
As the bottle rolled down the line;
She struggled on to no avail.
As fated bottle rattled on,
She caught, then, one final view
Of her 'loved distillery home.
Darkness came as the casket closed:
Whisky-maid bottled and alone.
She shipped and shifted, down the road;
The casket toppled yet still rode
Cross country side and oceans cold
Til came to rest at last, one morn,
In darkness far afield from home.
And home suffered from her absence:
In olden days the stream would dry,
But in this age's modern theme
A far worse fate befell the still:
With its whisky-maid so confined,
The spirit grew stale and spoiled;
Across the markets, bottles turned
And sales failed all o'er the world.
Nor could they define what had changed
For all but the nymph stayed the same.
There was no patch, there was no cure
For the thing that made it whisky
No longer danced 'cross mash and steam.
And over time the worse it got
Til bottles were cast aside
Un-cracked, collecting agéd dust,
Til the whisky e'en lost it's name
To epitaphs and eulogies.
And e'en those would be forgotten
Had not fair fortune's most dry wit
Founded an old fashioned dive bar.
The Bartender gathered them all,
A singular ignominy
And the final drops from the stream.
How long had the nymph fermented
Alone in the dark, and forlorn
Til the Barkeep cracked the cask
And lifted her into the light?
Oh, how long she had been trapped there
Til at last the amber glow shown
And the light, any light, exposed
A new world to the lost spirit.
The bottle flashed a moment
From under the Barman's warm hand:
A trick of the light and the mind.
This first bottle now tempted him
For the tale of this foul liquor
Was as some ancient old-wives tale
That he was most eager to prove.
But misery loves company,
And so the Keep, himself, forestalled
And placed, of all the bottles, hers
Like a trophy on some top shelf.
The rest he checked and stored
Til came the daring and the bold
To taste a folktale; sip a myth.
But the most daring never came,
And bottles stacked and sorted
Gathered yet more dust and sad hues.
And from her shelf, e'en through the haze,
She witnessed Man's manifold face:
The braggart, the ass, and the shy;
The wise, the daft, and the sober;
She witnessed all of their joys
And shared in all of their sorrows.
She came to know the truth of him:
Kind hearted, lonely; struggling,
And through her amber prison, grew
A mortal love known by so few.
Unaware, he yet struggled on
Until his failure weighed on him
As Atlas once held the globe.
And fin'lly he could take no more:
Embittered, he sat lamenting
From the farthest end of the bar
Casting his baleful eye around:
Twas then, at last, that fortune moved.
He spied, at last, in quiet rage,
Her dusty bottle just baiting
The anger he'd built in his heart.
He lunged forth aching to shatter
The icon of his broken dream,
But as his fingers brushed the glass,
He realized he still didn't know
The namesake he'd claimed for his bar.
He grabbed a rag and wiped it clean
And taking a glass from the stack
Sat back down again, soul weary.
And how the Nymph's heart leapt in joy
Beating wildly for freedom's taste.
She waited, quivering and flushed
Staring back at whom could not see.
Anticipation stayed his hand;
So many years spent laboring
In the name of the forgotten
Til now, finding himself remiss
Again alone in the moment,
This bottle his first; last measure
Begotten and ended alone;
An echo of a broken stone.
He stared a moment: cracked the seal,
And pulled with a skilled and tired palm
The agéd cork; her prison door.
The maid surged forth from the bottle,
And, half of her still steeped within,
Leaned far over and kissed the Keep
Before bounding and stretching limbs
That had been trapped for so long.
How shocked and speechless sat the Keep
As this tawny, auburn-haired maid,
The true spirit of whisky-dom,
Bounded and railed with endless vim
Until she came to rest at last
With her arms tightly around him
Whom she loved and who had freed her.
How aghast; woefully abashed
As he struggled to catch a breath
From between the bear-hugging arms
Of the joyous whisky-maiden.
And at last the keep found his voice;
Brittle, cracked, dry and hungover
To ask in modern epitaphs
The what and wherefore of the maid.
And in a voice of warm honey,
She told the Keep her life and tale,
And how from the shelf had watched
And through the dust and glass soon loved
The man caught now in between
The enchanted arms of a dream
She spoke on of how rare a gift
The love of a nymph had e'er been
And freed now, offered as bounty
This demi-god's most honest boon.
The classic tradition would state
That of course he took on the maid,
But this, now, is a modern age
And bartenders oft too jaded
To act whilst clouded by fable,
And blindly marry a maiden
Who'd just crawled out of a bottle.
And though the Nymph loved the Barkeep,
She was bound by antiquity
And could not so fully bestow
To anyone less than a mate.
He then besought the maid for time
To better know the whiskey-bride,
But some things are not so simple
And whispered that none existed.
Twas stated by myth's accord
That such moments only come once
And then they are gone forever.
Nor could she offer further proof
Than the magic already shown.
It was a myth and fantasy
And only such bold leaps of faith
Have ever claimed loves true bounty.
He brokered a deal with his heart
And agreed to take her as wife...
But alas, fable's not so simple:
There was a final caveat:
One proscription against doom
That must also be agreed to;
A minor dram, and a great truth.
The Bartender was forbidden
From even a thimble's measure
Of the spirit the Nymph called home --
And no one was to drink at all
From the bottle once a prison.
Now that she was free, the spirit
Returned again to the whisky
Reclaiming its greatness of yore.
And he was the sole provender
Who protested shot and liter,
For how could he offer to serve
What he himself never tasted,
And by provision, never could.
She returned with a smirk and a smile
That he should never fear such loss
When the honest truth and flavor
Could be found in every kiss;
Said giving him his first sample.
He assented the proscription
And her warmth at once filled the bar
As the boon of a whisky-nymph
Turned the place around once more.
So happy years began to pass
Twice again as bright as the past
To fill and overflow the brim
With a love more truth than fable.
Of her taste he never tired,
Nor ever felt again alone
Except once a year when the Nymph
Of necessity did return
To her native distillery
To bless again the whisky-stream
That flowed again since she was free.
He never journeyed with his wife
For both knew he could not avoid
A sip on the tasting room floor.
So the years past each other by
And year by year a great lament
With each such anniversary.
Like some forced sobriety,
Each year turned a harder withdrawal
From his whisky-maiden; his wife.
The years past, and still persisted
Until the Keep could take no more.
His wife was far away afield
And he sat and quivered and quailed
Fighting proscription's temptation
And failing now to remember
The taste he had come to savor.
And why thought he unto himself
Should every bottle but the one
Be offered up to the world?
And logic beckoned yet on
To consider how long she spent,
The liquor's real source and spirit,
And bottle aged nobility
Must be of her the highest proof
And the taste he was longing for.
He took the bottle down once more
Recalling the moment long past
When she blossomed forth and kissed him.
He licked his lips at the mem'ry
And un-stoppered the whisky home.
He poured himself two fingers full
Losing himself in bouquet and color;
His love and life across the sea.
And when his heart could take no more,
He sipped his last sip of whisky.
Far across the sea, her heart tore.
She'd felt the bottle in his hand,
And heard the distant pop of cork;
Felt the cold caress of the glass
And cried as the drink passed his lips.
She would never see him no more,
For though he lived but 'cross the sea,
The broken trust changed ev'rything.
She was free, and the whisky flowed,
But she could bless the Keep no more,
For the breach of faith cost him all,
And no matter if she still would,
A broken glass can hold no more.
And yet still worse for the Barkeep;
No matter how often he tried,
Whene'er the spirit touched his lips,
The finest whiskey turned to naught
But the purest, tasteless water.
Ev'ry morning he woke hungo'er
With the bitter taste of what lost...
Worse because he couldn't recall
Her scent, her taste, her voice, or hue
But for a hole he could ne'er fill.