A Tent In The Desert? Poem by Richard Blanch

There is a tent in the desert
For such as me, I think. There must be-
Free from city nonsense, free indeed from the less
That pretends to be more. Free of the west.
Somewhere to find
Clarity.
Essence.
Somewhere to vent into hard air all that has encrusted
The pores. Somewhere to shed everything.
A bowl full of gritty purity. Zest. A ring
Of shards of glass on the floor of the mind.
Vastness. Hot air. Lines that are unadulterated.
Unpolluted. Untainted. Unbent. Unsated.

But I wonder
Whether I am ready for all that iridescence
Of Sand and Firmanent. Heavens!
There would be room (a strange word to use) -
Space
Of course, for illusion,
For mirage. And so for hope and belief and trust.
Room for a tomb to celebrate.

But what of the soul’s weather? What of the
Feathering of light, the shivering filmy rest, a haze of mist
On fells? What of heather and colours that are muted?
Miasma. Softness. Something slithery, dense
And yet ungraspable. Neither shallow
Nor profound. In the end perhaps it is futile
This choosing. Inadequate.
Perhaps it is

That I need a water colour existence:
Effervescence and merging. In fact, impressionism-
With room (word now no longer strange) for uncertainties,
Room for what is fallow
Rather than what will never fruit.