Giovanna Speciale, 2021
The Good Ancestor
Butterfly specimens compressed between
two sheets of glass whose rich precise colours
last blurred the sky over a hundred years ago
Caught in a net then suffocated then preserved
Wings spread like a breath never exhaled
My Great Uncle John, whose neat copperplate identified
the species of each butterfly was himself caught in a net
made of little knots of patriotism and a distended mesh of duty
Preserved only as a name to explain my Grandma’s
silence about the years after Passchendaele
I’m told I should feel proud of my Great Uncle John:
this good ancestor, who did what he was told
But, for all the poppies and smart salutes, they were
a generation duped, who obediently marched into
machine gun fire. Their legacy a century of war
What will they say of me and my generation?
We saw the salvos loaded each with neat labels such as
“Climate change” “Habitat destruction”, “Overfishing”
Over the top we march unblinking into hail of floods, bushfires and hurricanes. We fly like moths to a flame.
