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