Sample Metaphor Poems

The metaphors of the poet enable us to see commonplace objects with a fresh and often startling vision. How many of us would think of a toaster as a silver-scaled dragon?

The Toaster

A silver-scaled Dragon with jaws flaming red

Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread.

I hand him fat slices, and then, one by one,

He hands them back when he sees they are done.

William Jay Smith

Steam Shovel

The dinosaurs are not all dead.

I saw one raise its iron head,

To watch me walking down the road

Beyond our house today.

Its jaws were dripping with a load

Of earth and grass that it had cropped.

It must have heard me where I stopped,

Snorted white steam my way,

And stretched its long neck out to see,

And chewed, and grinned quite amiably.

Charles Malam

Perhaps some of us, like the poet Beatrice Janosco, have imagined that our garden hose is really a serpent drinking from the garden tap. Good example of consonance.

The Garden Hose

In the grey evening

I see a long green serpent

With its tail in the dahlias

It lies In loops across the grass

And drinks softly at the faucet.

I can hear it swallow.

Beatrice Janosco

Subway

Every day I step into a coffin with strangers.

Nailing hurriedly my own coffin.

I go toward the city to be buried allve.

Etsuro Saxamoto