The Metaphor Metaphorically Speaking

For many years, I never really thought much about what attracted me to poetry.  No, more than attracted, commanded me to read it, write it, study it…  I was hooked on poetry from the moment, at the age of six, my father read me “On the Road to Mandalay” by Rudyard Kipling.  There was magic in it.  There was music in it.  It moved the way leaves move when they are being ruffled by errant breezes – something in me recognized that this was a language I understood and needed to learn how to speak.

I never questioned, in those early years, why I was transported by poetry to places I had never seen, would never see; touched by emotions I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.  I never questioned why it was that poetry offered me a sensory experience that took me beyond myself and allowed me to see myself from a distance, through a new lense.

Being gifted, as a student of poetry, with the incredible poet, teacher, mentor, Dan Masterson, provided me with the answers of why I was, would always be, an adoring fan of poetry – a worshipper of poetry.

Dan revealed, with the skill of a master magician, the soul of poetry -metaphor/simile/alliteration/onomatopoeia – and so many other poetic devices that the poem uses to bewitch you.  I celebrate Dan every day.  Today, I celebrate one of the intoxicating scents of poetry Dan taught me to inhale – the metaphor…

THE METAPHOR
(Metaphorically speaking)
…apples fat
on still
full-leafed autumn
trees
breathless winds
so shy they simply tease
a bird call
from across the meadow
of an endless sky
bleeding blue
assembled crowds
of
jasmine clouds
soft but growing
loud
a whispered word
barely heard
within the heart
dark
nights that never end
until
the startled sleepy
yawn
of dawn
alerts the song
within us to be sung
the hazard of the 
unanointed day    bee sting
a twisted knee
an unnamed pain
children’s laughter
turning into
tears
the inexorable spinning of
the years
the quiet chatter
of the stars
adorning heaven’s silky satin
skin 
grace of virtue
weight of sin
stalwart truth
arriving
firm-footed
in the face of greasy
lies
new memories waiting
to be born   scent
of roses       
savagery of thorn
the uttered bogus sound
of praise
the wound of
scorn      living

instructs
the offering
of a prayer
that we may find
a way
from here to
there
is nothing quite
as potent as
the word that speaks me
river    rainbow
summer rain    
words
the poem
impatiently
explores
requires us
to bend a knee
poets one and all
worship
and adore
the mesmerizing
metaphor…