Metamorphosis - Justin

On writing a sonnet about metamorphosis:

My method of writing poetry starts by playing with lines mentally, sometimes for a few hours sometimes for a few days. In this case it was four days before I committed a single word to writing and at that point I wrote a rough draft in about fifteen minutes. When I say playing mentally with lines, what I mean is working on rhythm and finding the rhymes that can be reused. I literally count syllables on my fingers while overemphasizing word accents sometimes out loud. I need to be in a quiet undistracted place to accomplish this.

Once I have a workable poem (meaning rhyme and rhythm meets the requirements of structure.) I read it repeatedly. I’m looking now at logical flow and feeling. Will it make more sense if I switch these two lines? In the case of this sonnet I essentially flipped the octave (first eight lines) over. This was the point when I realized that the generality that I was writing about was no longer general and that I was actually writing about the death of my sister-in-law, Shelly. Being aware of that, the sestet (final six lines) was completely rewritten to push to a more solid ending.

Butterfly in Purple

When she emerged would they still recognize
Her gloried form with bright new colors hued
Piercing new glory that obscures the rude
And see the larva for the butterfly
And does she search for them with changeling eyes
The siblings with whom on the leaves she chewed
With wisdom matching beauty now imbued
As new wings stretched she lifts into the skies

But if they cannot see each other now
‘til all have in the cocoon changing slept
Emerging with new bodies He’s endowed
And understanding not why they had wept
Together then in glorious changed guise
They’ll stretch new wings and reach for yonder skies