How Simile Works

The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys
of some city;
                            and the brickwork back
of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise
they'd set me astride, at the "petting zoo". . . .

The taste of our squabble still in my mouth
the next day;
                            and the brackish puddles sectioning
the street one morning after a storm. . . .

So poetry configures its comparisons.

My wife and I have been arguing; now
I'm telling her a childhood reminiscence,
stroking her back, her naked back that was
the particles in the heart of a star and will be
again, and is hers, and is like nothing
else, and is like the components of everything.

Albert Goldbarth