Cacciatorepoetry.net » Like a Metaphor (2009)

Like a Metaphor

One of those poems that was built around the title. It ends up exploring a common trigger for daydreaming — one of my favorite pastimes.

What is it about songwriters and metaphors?
To a carousing gadabout, women
are catfish dangling on the end of his line.
And would-be lovers, in their oblivion,
are two ships that pass in the night.
(Imagine if they actually had engine rooms,
and swank cabana lounges
and starboard sides.)

The same holds true of cold business types
who urge us to hit one out of the park,
or better yet, go after the low-hanging fruit.
When I hear that one, I want to
leap up and snag a plump Bartlett pear
right there in the shiny mahogany
conference room.

But there’s an inherent danger in metaphors,
especially the evocative ones:
Instead of clarifying a complex point,
they invite us to take the ball and run!

Like right now, for instance,
My mind is lost somewhere ‘twixt a cruise ship
and the corridors of a pear orchard
steeping under the Tuscan sun,

and if I’m not real careful,
soon I might be frying up that catfish
or racing toward the end zone,
stiff-arming would-be tacklers into the ground —
forty, thirty, twenty, ten … touchdown! —

when all the while I really should focus
on how to finish off this poem.