Marilyn Peck: ‘Butterfly Sleeps Perched on the Temple Bell’

Butterfly Sleeps Perched on the Temple Bell

“butterfly sleeps perched
on the temple bell
until it rings”

These lines are from a haiku by
Buson on Hiroshige’s road to Tokaido in Japan.
I love writing and reading haiku for its essence.
I record a moment keenly observed. Ten words,
three lines, seventeen syllables may, as perception
of nature’s miracles, march to present time.

I wonder at the way ideas of present time
come to me to be written when old Japan
is asleep in the sun on a windless day. Silent bell
ringer starts the pull sequence without words.
Then the bell booms out. The butterfly by
God’s grace escapes from death. The essence
of recovery includes butterfly perception.

On the road to Tokaido perhaps the perception
of the bong of bell and butterflies is to old Japan
as Hiroshige’s journey is to formulate words,
syllables needed for haiku. Perch on a temple bell
will bring nothing of peacefulness as an essence
essential to that moment of keenly observed time.
Used sparingly, words delineating behaviour by

butterflies, temple bells or bell ringers have, by
establishing a landscape, recalled Old Japan.
I go on the journey through the woodblock essence
of Hiroshige’s prints leading to Tokaido. The words
of the haiku, senryu, tanka are part of perception
needed for the journey to the butterfly. The time
taken is from the start to the end. Temple bell

booming, wakes the butterfly perched on the bell.
I love also the tiny woodblock prints whose essence
captivates my soul on this journey through Japan.
Slowly through the mountain passes, the time
stills, walking with my friends. The perception
is of hot and cold, winter and summer and day by
day as night follows the sun. Oceans of words

tell their histories. My friends are poems of words
arranged in particular sequence that show the essence
of a singular moment in a day’s delightful perception.
The perception of what I see is recorded faithfully by
images in my mind of how the butterfly departs the bell
before the boom. Monks pull ropes to sequenced time
in a Kyoto temple for a new year’s grace, in old Japan.

My journey follows Hiroshige’s Tokaido through Japan.
I listen to the wind sounds through the forests of time.
I see again in my mind’s eye the butterfly perch on the bell.
I wait to hear the boom, to have the clear perception
of the wood striker bringing forth a depth of sound by
the strike on the big bong bell. I write lines of words:
haiku that have all of poetry’s instant simple essence.

big bong bells rest
in winter waiting wanting
spring thaw summer heat

Marilyn Peck