A metaphor describes one thing in terms of another, creating a connection beyond literal resemblance. In poetry, calling a memory a locked room or a hope a fragile flame can make an inward experience easier to picture and explore.
Read the examples below and identify what is being compared. Which qualities does the connection reveal, and what would be lost in a literal description? A useful metaphor contributes to meaning rather than simply giving a line a more decorative surface.
Written in My Hand
Grief is loud.
It cries until your body hurts.
It screams into empty rooms.
It asks why
until the word means nothing.
It makes you angry
at people who are still here.
It makes you miss things
you thought you hated.
But grief is quiet too.
Sometimes it sits beside you
while you laugh.
Sometimes you have a good day
and feel guilty for having one.
Sometimes you forget.
And then you remember.
And somehow,
remembering hurts worse
than never forgetting at all.
Grief is a ghostwriter.
It writes things inside you
that you don't remember asking it to write.
It changes the way you remember before.
It changes the way you imagine after.
It makes absence feel like a presence.
And after a while,
you stop asking grief to leave.
You make room for it.
Maybe because losing it
would mean losing one more thing.
So it stays.
Quiet enough that no one else hears it.
Loud enough that you always do.
And somewhere along the way,
it learns to write in your hand.
Until one day you read yourself back
and cannot tell
where grief ends
and you begin.
— Sofia Aronovsky
My Turkish Sufi friend, proud of his faith, invited me to the sacred ritual of the Whirling Dervishes. The musicians wore long black cloaks and high felt hats, representing the grave and the tombstone.
The Dervishes enter, discarding their black cloaks, accompanied by a reed pipe, they start to turn.
As I watched the dancers circle continuously
in costume of white robes and conical hat
arms outstretched towards heaven
whirling round like planets orbiting the sun
becoming closer to God and inner truth
connected by physical meditation
I wondered
if God will hear my prayers
when I only kneel to pray
The Things We Don’t Inherit
We inherited warnings before we understood the danger,
rules whispered from one woman to another.
Hold your keys between your fingers.
Watch your drink. Don’t walk home alone.
We inherited apologies for taking up space,
and the instinct to make ourselves smaller.
We inherited stories told carefully,
as though the truth might break in our mouths.
I wonder how many women before us
wanted to leave something different.
Not the fear.
Not the shame someone else put in their hands.
Maybe what we leave behind can be a door
the next woman does not have to force open.
A boundary already given a name.
A voice that makes hers easier to find.
I cannot choose everything that was left in me.
Some things become scars before we can refuse them.
But I can choose what I leave in you.
And you can choose what you leave in her.
They left us a fight.
I want us to leave each other.
— Sofia Aronovsky
A SAFE ROUND TRIP DAY
(Two Haiku Perspectives)
I
Fell asleep last night.
Have no idea where I went;
God, sending me back:-
II
The sun rose and left;
The moon waxed throughout the night;
Sleep waned; I woke up:-
Education, I say, is
Two Swiss-cheese gloves
Slide one over the other
Are all the holes covered?
ivy climbs the
garden wall,
winding where
it pleases
soft green fingers
seeking stone,
finding every crack
and threading within
i used to believe
it was beautiful,
the way its
divine
green
delicacy
held on
so tightly
and never let go
ivy roots burrow
deeper than
one's eye can
see
i did not know that
something could
look like love
while slowly
crushing everything
beneath it
The Parable of a Lone Traveller
In search of livelihood,
I stayed alone,
roamed around—
at times, in the luxury of cities,
at times, in the inadequacy of my native place.
In hindsight, I tried to trace
the missing point!
I belong to none.
The parable of a lone traveller:
the more you listen,
the less you realise.
Emptiness, laced with silence.
The path of a commoner,
always uncommon!
Is life not written on the passing clouds
Shapeshifting rumors on an errant breeze
Tailoring the moon’s mysterious cloak
The fire and ice of an unsettled liege
Is she not a master of words that deny
The meaning of heaven and earth and goodbye
Conjuring demons to lead us astray
An unending search for the why of the why
Wet sands erase the sun’s sepia smiles
Leaving us breadcrumbs of love and despair
The flicker of longing we no longer feel
An aching that asks were we really there
Clouds have no mem’ry save moonrise and tide
And life only moments in which they abide
If the "Hare" really cared
To give the "Timid Tortoise"
A fair scare, and tapped
The "Tortoise's," tight-lipped shell...
Brother, I'm here to tell ya...there'd be Hell!
And, If the "Timid Tortoise" dared,
Peak a glimpse of the coming dawn,
On the lawn, who would find his head,
On the "Chilly-Willy" chopping block?...
"Hear Ye," "Hear Ye!"..."Hare" today!..."Mock Turtle" soup tomorrow!
Today I can smell,
nothing of the room.
That's all I smell in Ms. Rilling's room,
at the end of my junior year.
Truth be told,
I am conflicted,
about,
the end of my junior year.
I am happy the school year is over
yet scared about being one step closer
to being thrown to the wolves,
thrust into adulthood,
into the cruel world,
into the complex and complicated thing,
that is college.
I am worried about
how things might go on my own.
But I take a few deep breaths,
in and out,
tell myself it will be okay,
that adulthood is not here yet,
at the end of my junior year.
Silken, shimmering gossamer soft
Radial threads pulled taut
Anchor lines holding the structure in place
A frame laid out, outlining a shape
And a sticky spiral dew-soaked and tempting
As I get closer what is that, that I see
Thrashing, struggling, trying to get free
Yet chained in bondage with sticky manacles
Its dark body stark against soft white threads
Like rats in a maze running out of time
And this may sound like a bug in a web
But happenstance is rarely unorchestrated
Now if we zoom out maybe just a little
And look inward to our lives, what do we see?
Are we … trapped … in bondage by a web?
I came to tell you something,
a certain exactitude.
There are those with walls in their minds.
Divisions in their brain
separate them from the sane.
But that’s not too bad.
For, they’re unaware, oblivious
to what we accept as normal,
incurious to what ought to be,
acquainted only with the geometry
of their personal maze.
But walls of man’s own volition,
in travesty to nature’s ways,
lying heavy on their foundation;
unacceptable, unscalable, deranged walls
that immure rational men:
these are the walls that gauge insanity
and drive men into delirium,
the walls we build ourselves
brick by bloody brick.
Where can we sit?
There isn’t a chair still standing.
They now lie prostrate
with broken backs.
What are they lamenting?
Those eager children with voracious minds
once sat on them with pedagogic postures,
impelled to stoop in perverted stance,
grew into adults with adulterated minds.
But the vacuous chairs whose living wood
refused to be moved by lies
(a hazard in their parlous state)
better reduced, dismantled, axed,
no room for them in this collectivist state.
What is yours is theirs, is theirs, is theirs,
there’s no room for stubborn chairs.
But, comrade, your miscalculation will tire,
where will you sit?
There isn’t a chair still standing.
You’ll soon lie prostrate with broken backs,
reduced, collapsed, repenting.
The cars move steadily on the streets, drowning out the busy rhythm of paved slick roads. Outside, long afternoon shadows stretch across the city grid. Everything shifts incredibly loud, moving to a choreography we steadily notice until the music of traffic stops and the city becomes quiet again.
we move
in circles
racing through green lights
fast move on slick roads
the spinning world will never slow down for us
still on the asphalt we yield
then rest
On the hill He created
The ill hill that is fated
He was crucified
For His people He died
Of all and all of His creation
It was only on Earth He was displayed
To assume otherwise is waylaid
To the composition fallacy
Of the whole and pieces we see
Aliens are not salient
Evolution says maybe, maybe maybe
Married a theory, and aborted each baby
Know the truth and it shall set you free
And break you out of slavery
From apes to posterity
And rocks to complexity
The fantastic gymnastic
Implored an A.I. scholastic
And the plastic of a prophylactic
promise in the back seat of a car
Metaphor Categories
Read wonderful metaphor poetry on the following sub-topics:
animal, family, friends, football, kids, lion, love, loneliness, moon, nature, yourself
and more.
Definition | What is Metaphor in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.
Related Poetry Forms
symbol, image, analogy, similitude, emblem, personification, allegory, hope, metonymy, trope,