Teaching Metaphor in Late Summer

Your voice is a blue wedding dress

in August. Your mouth is the fuchsia

center of a stone fruit. Your hands are

the last of the hot days. Your steady spine

is a mile of tall, sweet corn. Your fingernails

are the soft mist rising from the pond come

September. Your humming is the bullfrogs

or the new calf or the library’s deep tunnels

filling with light. Your earlobes are the later

sunrises, or a cold spoonful of yogurt. 

Your palms are the act of pumping gas

in the midafternoon, your collar bone

a cold, aluminum can pressed on bare skin.

Your legs are the dark mercy of evening. 

Your forgiveness is rain in the apple orchard.

& your heart. Your heart is a car in a field

with all of its doors open.