Alfa Art Gallery poem (Draft 1)

These mountains could hide Shangri La.
They could be a woman soft with sleep—
the neck at least, the veins another landscape.
One day, a traveler, just beginning,
finds the sea and sky tangled in such bliss
that they cannot bear to lift apart,
to create a horizon from the separation of their bodies.
What else, besides need can drive a man out into
a world that is not a world,
if not the hues and loose dreaming,
if not the far shore and soft step?
What else can cause him to cut a line across the ocean,
fill each brief outline of nature,
each ripple and stone, lighting it all
with this ancient and familiar longing.