Outside, the cherry blossoms litter grass with pink
like joy, now visible. Contentment fills her heart
and pruning pretty plants, she starts toward her art.
Beside, her baby’s sleeping, gurgling like a sink,
her stomach undulating like the rosy spring.
The dried-up leaves upon her plant she stores apart
each time she snips their crumbling softness, crushed to stars.
The task completed now, she sketches, casually.
Her pencil’s rapid scratches send her wondering:
to children, actions should be done more carefully.
She cannot snip her careless faults like dying leaves,
and rash mistakes could never be erased or fixed.
Unlike a sketch, unlike a leaf, her deeds transfix,
like spring’s unfolding captivates the mind’s reprieve.
I wrote four sonnets for my English novel study based on the fantastic novel Shizuko's Daughter by one of my favourite authors, Kyoko Mori. It tells of four women and their struggles in Japan. The protagonist Yuki deals with her mother's suicide; her mother Shizuko deals with her husband's affair; Hanae, Yuki's new stepmother deals with her bitter life; and Masa, Yuki's grandmother, must deal with the fact that her daughter took her own life.
ReplyDeleteThis sonnet was "Spring", representing Shizuko, a middle-aged mother. It was the first in my sonnet cycle, Four Women, with each sonnet assigning a season to similar characters in Shizuko's Daughter.
Ooh, very nice! I'm impressed with how you understand motherhood, you know, considering you're a teenage boy without children of your own. :)
ReplyDeleteAm I? No, I don't have kids :)
ReplyDeleteReading the novel really helped, as it explored motherhood in its different facets.