What Calls the Heart

In life,
What calls the heart becomes the legacy 
We leave behind
And those endowed will assure that its destiny 
Will be manifest in kind.

Builders of
Tombs and monuments, attempts at perpetuity
By those whose vainglories feared only mortality,
(Since at least Ozymandias)
Fade to pitiless objects of curiosity
Sans a life force for continuity.

Then
Mark my end with no icon of marble or of bronze
Whose fixèd stare dons but one gaze on and on.
Rather find me in those I taught
Shared with, loved and fought,

For
I am yours as surely as when I lived.
Summon me through times remembered
(The image of our laughing renews your smile)
And I will be yours again
In ways open to us now 'ere we began.

And
When comes the Call, whether your heart
Will heed
Can a legacy live and an endowment start
 In deed. 
Copyright Paul Thomson 2016
Copyright © | Year Posted 2021

Poem

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