Parts of Speech

J comes up with unusual metaphors sometimes. The bright pink and orange streaked sky of dusk would be "someone scribbling with a highlighter on the sky". This evening, in appreciation of dinner (which was perfectly ordinary by the way) I served she said "I love you as much as two Mount Everests joined lengthwise". I was deeply gratified to hear that.

That is a child's world in similes and metaphor and then there is the poet's. A gifted poet could create stunning word pictures with something as banal as sentence punctuation.

Asides - by Richard Wilbur

Though the season's begun to speak
Its long sentences of darkness,
The upswept boughs of the larch
Bristle with gold for a week,

And then there is only the willow
To make bright interjection,
Its drooping branches decked
With thin leaves, curved and yellow,

Till winter, loosening these
With a first flurry and bluster,
Shall scatter across the snow-crust
Their dropped parentheses.

I wish I was able to see the world the way J does or had the gift for creating one where leaves scatter across the snow in their "dropped parentheses". While I have neither, I am glad I can at least appreciate both.