Metaphor

He looked up. He said,
"What do you suppose
this word means?"
He held out the magazine
to me and pointed to the page.

I walked over to the bed
and looked. He was pointing
to the word metaphor.

He said, "It must mean like
a sign, a signal of some kind."

I said, "Like from outer space?"
He said, "Yes."

I said, "Like from God?"
He said, "I don't know."

We looked at the word
metaphor for a long time.
Neither of us dared
to pronounce it. It lay there
on the white page being itself,
like a signal from outer space.

— Lewis Nordan, "Music of the Swamp"