Poems with Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things by stating one thing is another, without using 'like' or 'as.'
Metaphor is the backbone of poetic language. When a poet writes 'life is a broken-winged bird,' they compress an entire philosophy into a single image. Unlike simile, which acknowledges the comparison ('life is like a bird'), metaphor insists on identity — this thing IS that thing — creating a more powerful, immediate connection. The best metaphors don't just compare; they transform. They reveal something about the subject that literal language cannot reach. A good metaphor makes the reader see the world differently, if only for a moment.
Examples of Metaphor
- 1Hope is the thing with feathers (Emily Dickinson — hope compared directly to a bird)
- 2The world is a stage (Shakespeare — life compared to theatrical performance)
- 3Her words were daggers (speech compared to weapons)
Poems Using Metaphor
The Second Shelf
FeaturedThere's a word for the way your coffee cup still sits on the second shelf where no one else would put it—
First Morning
FeaturedI woke before you and did nothing about it. The radiator ticked. Your shoulder rose and fell.
The Slow Arithmetic of Love
We don't say I love you anymore. We say: your phone is at eleven percent. We say: I picked up the thing
My Mother's Hands
My mother's hands could find a fever through a forehead, could tell a melon's ripeness
After Rain
After the rainfall, a snail draws its silver line across the stone step.
What the Clock Said
When I was young, the afternoons were countries with no border known, and summer hummed its lazy tunes
Sonnet for the Sleepless
The house at three a.m. becomes a throat that hums with all the things we didn't say, and I lie still as someone in a boat
Sonnet at the Edge of Spring
The earth is trying something underneath— you feel it in the softness of the ground, a stirring, like a sleeper holding breath
The Fog Inside
It isn't sadness. Sadness has a shape— you can walk around it, point to it, explain it to a doctor
Winter Kitchen
The windows fog with everything we've made— the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh— and past the glass the garden starts to fade
Ode to the Body at Forty
O body, you magnificent disaster, you creak now getting out of chairs and take the stairs a half-beat slower