A Temporal Vision Poem by Mark Heathcote

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.