Talking with a friend recently

about the vivid images in her

poetry, he remarked that

images, metaphors and similes

brighten the page so the

readers can look through and

beneath and pealing back the

page perhaps seeing beyond

the words into the depth of

their own experiences and

then maybe down to

middle earth where they

could play with all

kinds of strange metaphors

not even mentioned in the

poem. And it might not even

stop there. Perhaps, a

reader could see all

the way to China where all

the clothes he was wearing

at the time of reading the

poem were made. He thinks

he can see the basement

floor of the factory where

his running shoes were

sewn and glued. And it

was there he realized that

perhaps not only had he

not plumbed the depths,

he hadn’t even

scratched the

surface.