Counting losses like butterflies

Some nights

I sit down to count my losses.

Really wallow in it – 

I have my wine, it is the blue hour

The roses are fading,

The lump in my throat 

Is all ready to go.

I like to lay them out

Pin them down like butterflies

Named, categorised, encased

So they cannot burst upon me

All flap and flutter 

Offhand, off guard. 

I begin:

My father (which? What?)

My broken hearts

My foolish limitations, my craven poison

I try   I try   I dig

In a scrape          of earth no deeper       than a nightjar   nest

And the wine        is minerally, clean          I think of volcanoes, fire

Remember the skylarks on Pompeii the purple sea

And truthfully nothing bad has ever happened

Not really

    So my father   twitches on the pin         the large white of my mother     Ascends

        A man’s indiscretion   eclipsed   by the comma my sister   that ring around us

  All my children         the moment I   fell in love

Pelting downhill for a bus     All those hills     lighthouses     seas with their drumbeat

Those gannets diving holding hands evening light   beautiful

       The feeling in autumn       deep as tortoiseshell         quick   pulling    cold

             They fill my mouth          it opens                    out pours                 diamonds

         Onto the mosaic garden table             these peacock jewels

Lift on woodbine    busy       float I   lean    back

Drink   watch         laugh

At this evening’s        happy   failure.