! ! Metaphor. Poem by Michael Shepherd

Like the unicorn,
they have to need to be;
to hear our need for them to be.

Like time,
they must creep up on the writer,
on the reader,
invisible
yet with inevitability
which cannot be escaped.

Like thieves,
they must enter unannounced,
take what they must.

Like mice,
they must take up residence
until there is no longer sustenance for them.

Like bailiffs,
they must demand entrance;
be admitted;
take their just exchange.

Like housekeepers,
they must earn their keep
by keeping us in all we ask of them.

Like lovers,
they must prove themselves
part of our lives
until our earthly sentence ends the dream.

Like children,
they must know their place;
then be loved for themselves
beyond life itself.

For they are life,
revealing its boundlessness
with all the freshness
of a lettuce cut from the ground,
the well-prepared, fine ground
in a landscape that stretches out, is limitless.

Do not deal lightly, or be profligate
with metaphors; they are our life-blood.