Japanese Butterfly

A profile of a Japanese proverbial woman in Spenserian sonnet form.

Her beauty swaying with the grip of time,
she lights a candle with another one.
The leaves so green and crisp to touch in rhyme,
she blossoms like a cherry tree, undone.

Yet a Chinese butterfly in black sun,
a sparrow chirps in Spring, its eyes wide-shut.
She finds her luck tonight with what she's won,
she lingers under trees, the aged beechnut.

The answers to her penance prove clear-cut,
none have saved her yet from streaks of darkness.
A cuckoo in the ancient yard, somewhat
sings patterns of the sky's blithe blue nightdress.

Who is she with her long, dark chestnut hair
peering through her sad, almond eyes so rare?





A Spenserian sonnet has 3 quatrains and a couplet, the first three run
ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, and the last two lines are a rhyming couplet, EE. The poem is done in iambic pentameter.



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