MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE

 

A Temporal Vision

 

A temporal vision

That's what I had

When I was a child

I walked not as a lad,

But as a lord, or was I a man

Wandering wistfully, blissfully tall

Wild and mad, hand in hand

Ghost-like across the land

Through fields of thick, low-lying fog

Did I trace the wind backwards through its red iron clay root?

Trace it back to the core of a cavern in the mouth of a cave

Back into them, dank, dark smells of England's thorn and fire

Green oaks tall as a bluebell's spire

English yew's soft, scented, with a slow-growing desire.

A temporal vision

A fox, a hare, a nightingale's stoic stares

The spleen of a river cutting through...stone, sky, and air

Bringing with it mouth-watering joys of despair.

In a country lane

Where a noise-filled highway, railway train-

Disturbs a stoat

A stickleback in its watery throat

Electrical in her belly of light

Where the white owl the flicker of a woodland, night

Seethes in the silence with earth, roaring nerves

Temporal as a winter's frost…

Temporal with the joys of a childhood lost.

 

The Imaginary Joys Of Childhood

 

Let us make a treehouse in this here, oak

Let it be seven-foot square and bespoke

Let us gather and chop down the wood

Let us fill the gaps with straw and mud immured

Let there be a window to the south and west

Let there be a little put-me-up-bed for our rest

Let me be your Tarzan, and you be my Jane

Let us toast our happiness together with cheap champagne

Let us give up tawdry schoolwork and toil

Let us build a new life, farm, and till the soil

Let us-hideout in the woods and learn the language of rooks

Let us catch fish by bending your hairpins into hooks

Let us live one day at a time, full of living full of gifts

Let us marry here and know ourselves that our God exists.

 

Wheelbarrow

 

Father, Father, wheel me in your wheelbarrow.

I'll pretend I'm the plough & the harrow

and I'll help you sow a new tomorrow.

 

Father, father, I'll be a bucking bronco

I'll pretend I'm on my swan white-pedalo

I'm gently sailing down the moonlit Congo.

 

Father, father, you've grown six-foot-four

your body is built like an arching barn door

tip-me-out and lift-me up to heaven off the floor.

 

Father, Father, I was so young and so small-

like a cornflower. And you were so tall

you were like blue skies to me, a loving Neanderthal.

 

MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE

 

MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of “In Perpetuity” and “Back on Earth,” two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.