Swallowtails

The inbox teems with enquiries. But he swipes
his keyboard to the side and makes a space
for Art, this businessman. He takes a flight
from Analytics, London, to a place

remembered from a childhood holiday –
the Alps. His mother showed him flying things;
they swooped around him in a dizzying haze
of black and gold. He hears their patterned wings

in harmony with her familiar tones
as she provides their name. It's swallowtails.
Perhaps she recognised them from the tomes
our granddad owned. The colours, shapes and scales

and frail antennae, bristling, come to mind
three days before her first chemo is due.
He makes them now, assembling lines and lines
of soldiers, soothers, in their regal hue.