Sunday, July 19, 2009

thinking in metaphor


















Thinking in metaphor
That’s the way my mind works.
It’s a bit of a joke about me
For the people I work with.

You tell me about your work
How you approach it like a restaurant
Where you are the waitress,
Applying one experience to another.

Like diners the staff who bring in the revenue
Tell you what they want, sometimes a challenge.
The programmers are the kitchen staff.
You keep them happy filling the orders.

I hear you thinking in metaphor
And I am blown away by the discovery.
Here’s yet another something about you
That matches me in my core self.

I’m visiting you and there’s an empty shelf you cleared
For my stuff that matches the empty shelf at my place for you.
It is literal shelf space. It is also metaphorical.
We are becoming part of each other’s lives.

We are sitting on your couch looking at those shelves.
Mostly you don’t use them for books and you are telling me
How pleased you were at my place to notice the same approach.
There are so very many parallels on every level converging.

You don’t believe in magic. You are a rational person.
You subscribe to the scientific outlook on things.
And there’s a very sound basis for being grounded like that.
But there’s something going on here outside of that mindset.

There’s some point at which the odds of so many happy chance events
Invites us to entertain the thought of another explanation.
No matter that we don’t know what that is,
We know that it is happening. We take notice and enjoy it.

You are aware of yourself in my presence feeling comfortable.
I tell you how I feel welcome in the place where you have lived alone.
You tell me how you don’t feel self conscious when we are intimate.
I feel like we are effortlessly dancing hearing the same music.

But I don’t pretend it is all a blissful dream.
Sleep does not come easily to either of us alone
And together it is more of a challenge.
We are like the proverbial ships passing in the night.

But we are problem solvers, both of us.
It’s in our nature to figure out solutions.
We talk about it and think about it and work it out,
Working it out for both of us together.