Don't Let Your Heart Abandon You Poem by Mark Heathcote

Don't let your heart abandon you,
There is this feather within you, its longing,
Longing to float, lose its heavy burden,
Never to pivot or turn or twist. Just to fly.

There is a teary acetate window,
With a child's windmill arms failing.

The hands of a clock the face of which
Looks on alarmed, just to be living,
Just to be a clutch of unbroken-eggs
In a serpent nest, still, hissing dreaming.

Just too once again fly.

There is this beating pulse of desire
This low departing deepening everglade,

This heavy cumbersome weathervane;
Parting tears and elms, clutching love
In its razor-sharp halcyon talons,
There is this deepening eternal fire.

Just too once again fly.

That sustains my directionless
Own, frigid-fingers in a woman's soft, scented mane.
Oh, how dewy-wet is my soul,
If you don't know Honey, darlings just ask.

And-I'll-whisper, hiss like an asp!
Lord, happy to belly down in the long, long lush-grass.
Lord, happy again to abandon any foreign wings.
And repent at leisure as an angel or a devil sings.