A Call Of Innocence Poem by Mark Heathcote

A call of innocence holds my breath blest.
Like a starling in her warm spring nest
What was it like in that instance of peaceful rest?
Beating like a wing in the heart of my breast

Church bells peel a blissful summer yearning
Mayflies flit along a rainbow beam of light.
As a fearful hare takes leave in statue-flight
Pheasants leap with eyes still cartridge-burning.

Calf's cartwheel dance taunts the lolling of steers.
Wasps dizzy and dewed in a Foxgloves rainstorm shower
Toad's belly, white on goblets of fallen elderflower
Shrew's run-relay back and forth green barley ears

As we swank along these lush, ancient green baths
Stigmata's yellow light pierces the wetland grass.
Marigold's cusp souls in a pastoral bell jar of glass
Raindrops glittering alight the sun-swathed paths.

That laughs at all these fallen empires Earth-bred
Earth-fed, earthly-minded, earthly-sheltered
Earth-created, earth-hearted, earth-coloured
In man's footprints, pestilent concrete trampled
What did I see? I do not know.
A call of innocence; I guess so.