Butterfly at Samhain (poem)

Today, stacking oak and cedar for the winter fires
I found at the very bottom of the store
two black butterflies, alive and tight-clinging
in the darkness, for their winter rest

Last year, driving my dad back across the November moor
after my mum had died, there were voices
in the car, high celestial singing that both of us
heard with an inner ear, and I knew then

that the ancestors live so close, awaiting our notice;
and today with the veil between worlds
this slender, as I feed the robin I think
how it is my mum is so present I could almost

reach out and take her white hands that stayed
so much softer, always, than mine. Some people
think of the soul as a butterfly; and now
I think that with all the pain in the world

and the losses we sustain, still the heart's
small candle burns in the darkest places
and the soul has its own resilience.


© Roselle Angwin October 31st 2012