A Clarity Poem by Richard Blanch

To whatever inspires anyone to write or share their verse.

……..So it shines bright and fair
As it must, well beyond reaching,
As fine, as far, untouchable as stars. But they
Twinkle, glitter, fade. While this light, radiant, glows

Steadily, for all its blaze, for all its fire,
Its shooting meteors. Strange that beneath
Its aromatic conflagration, its dire
Raging flame, the heartland, heathland, though it burns,

Does not blacken with hopeless yearning.
Rather, crust broken, woken from dreaming, it grows
Rosy in moments, readily losing its grey
Dusty tiredness, nor hoping, nor in fear

Of ruin, nor needing more than this teaching -
How to keep brightness from melting away-
Not seeking meaning, nor wanting the beam
For its own. That fierce majestic gleam,

Finds its way to so many. Does it know
Its own worth, how it turns
Keys in locks, opens doors, whirls
The dead times aside, drives out dusk with its rays-.

How it rejoices pain, celebrates feeling,
Forces eyes open, elevates weeping-?
Or does it, in seeming solitude, unaware,
Give its goodness oblivious? Does it despair

As it shines bright and near,
One, itself, as all beings, but breaching
The walls of remoteness - warmer, more dear,
Lending us flavour, maturing peaches

High on our walls, sweeter than May,
More luminous than scented suns, than day,
Puzzling healing poetry out of our prose-
A never-ending, intricately lustrous rose.