metaphors for poetry

The sound of all the panes breaking inward this gleaming onyx surface tilting into view cold then colder

an eye in the distance the things you thought you could tell me to fear spent ashes and settled bones and nothing arriving

I have loved like that you don’t know shaken windows but I have loved like that

and when my heart began counting backward I walked away before my flare kept the wrong ones warm

again again you cannot glean how to be wildfire I have seen that flicker in your eye

where it belonged when the wolves settled here again I learned not to be nervous they do not hunger for me

you do not hunger for my bones you are just afraid of the dark and of my conflagration perhaps less than you should be

Lighthouse

Tones like a call to arms or to worship,

a ghost ship's alarm, storm warnings under a gold and pink sky

in late, late summer everything gently bright

and right and buoyant with music

that knows nothing of never again.

An entire city filled with notes from a piano

cascading from a window on an upper floor

ringing out like bells that this is

not the first of many meetings

on common ground, filled with riches and findings,

fireheat and sigils, but in fact the last

of its kind. Oh captain. Would that the tower

still stood, the lightning unstruck, and you

whoever you are

There's a you I breathe in like the scent of meeting after long absence –

like sap rising into the furthest branches, into dormant nodes and the growth that stirs there –

liquid amber for safekeeping.

A you I sense like letting warmth find skin at the tail end of a long dark winter

closer, more open, as if you've missed this because of being held too still for a time.

This you I trace as if outlined in my membranes

not safe and yet nothing like pain or what could be betrayed

an enfolding yet not the kind that wants to possess for longer than a moment that holds within it

every bit of suffering and sliver-like, shivery joy it took to get here.

This gritty invocation rings deeper than my bones.

I accept that it won't let me forget how brief and brittle life is.

It makes me want to witness you right from my core, my palms, my spine, the soles of my feet –

feel of you what cannot be defined –