Two Peculiar Metaphors

~Revisit the Longed-for Lake

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t
Say it too early. At all.
Show it. Let us look and guess.

Did you make it? Are we there?
What does this image suggest?
Spring rain on stucco houses

In tile-roofed subdivisions
In the desert back in March.
Two young girls creating homes

On the carpet of one house,
Using clever, colored blocks
While the black cat watched.

Two girls drawing each other
In pencil while the rain dried,
And the black cat prowled outside.


~Dove atop Pine

No one sees things in the woods
That don’t have material
Explanations anymore

Except when the woods themselves
Are only a metaphor
The way an angel is not

Either a human or God
Not even an animal
Not even really alive

Never was any of these
Not even among the most
Earnest of mythologies

Leading to the temptation
To use a term like “only”
For what has escaped being

Like any other being
Has escaped the use of like
Flown straight to identity