[I Sway] The Butterfly Queen
poetry
Published on:
February 17, 1:30pmWord Count:
144Last Edited:
April 28, 5:52amWork Description
This poem is about a woman, but for whom I have never met in person, still. She is someone I met on the internet, who is also a poet, (a very good one, I might add).
We hardly talk anymore, (that's the net for you!) but this one is for her.
This work is archived and isn't accepting critiques or comments. Why?
Print
Winds do drift through my soul
Eyes closed, all reposed and
dreaming
Trees sway and I sway with them
Standing still, together, I
sway
I can hear her voice and I am still
All alone, but not alone I
sway
As winds sweep across my face
I feel her flutter
around, as I sway
She whispers soft on my neck
"I am here," and I sway
Then she kisses my soul
As her wings do unfold
And as winds drift through me
Trees sway and we sway with
them
Standing still, together, we sway
I hear her voice and we are
still
She stands beside me, breathes in the winds
With butterflies in her eyes,
her spirit transcends
And I am there as those winds carry her away
With golden tears in my eyes,
I sway
I know she'll be back, again some day
Rate This Work
Discussion
I read this poem a few days ago and missed the imagery altogether, but today my soul was ready to receive it, and at least for the time being, it is my favorite work on Scribophile. I love that you say "winds" drift through you. "wind" is such a loaded word, especially in other languages. In Greek and Hebrew for instance, the words pneuma and ruach respectively can mean either wind, breath, or spirit, or (in the Bible) Holy Spirit. I thought of these different meanings as I read your poem, sensing that "wind" in your language has a similarly loaded meaning. The Butterlfy queen blows winds into your spirit. Beautiful, lovely, rich, perfect metaphor.
I must say from a technically analytical point of view, that I don't understand your punctuation. I wonder if you are so focused on the thought that you neglect punctuation...? or maybe you purposely flow with your intuition (right or wrong, that's how i initially do punctuation)?
Either way, I would like to point out some things that might make better sense to me.
She stands beside me, breaths in the winds
"breathes" rather than "breaths"
Standing still, together I sway
I can hear her voice and I am still
compare these two lines withStanding still, together, we sway
Standing still, together, we sway
I hear her voice and we are still
Okay, I'm thinking several things here Angel. First, I was struck by how close these lines are to being parallel, yet they are different enough that I didn't catch the paralellism in the poem until about the 6th read. The inconsistent punctuation of "together" bothered me. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not. Angel what do you think about making these lines more parallel and breaking the poem into two stanzas? I'm a big fan of parallelism (probably comes from my love of Hebrew poetry), and I wonder if it would help to break the first stanza after
As her wings do unfold
then maybe add a line and structure the next couple of lines so that the poem has a more structure parallelism, because you already have it there a little, so I would suggest doing something with it. As I think about it, you might not have to break it into stanzas anyway, but to me the poem implies stanzas.
anyway, that's my feedback, feel free to explain to me anything that I missed as far as meaning and style. Thanks for sharing this!

![Mark [I Sway] The Butterfly Queen as read](/images/check.gif)
![Add [I Sway] The Butterfly Queen to your reading list](/images/list-add.gif)
I really enjoyed this poem. I liked the references to butterflies and the softness of your words and feelings for the Butterfly Lady. The scenes you painted in words were vivid and lovely. The ending was sad but hopeful for a future meeting. Very nicely done.
Lady Dragonwyck