It's that time of year in Boston when the sun sprints across the sky for the gold.
We've been talking about describing skin color with food metaphors, so it was interesting to note that poets also use that technique to describe the winter sun. Consider stanzas from these two poems, written about a century apart:
WINTER-TIME
— by Robert Louis Stevenson
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
...
IT WAS SO COLD
by Whitman McGowan
...
Outside Paris waterfalls retreated back into mountains.
God Himself became an irrelevant ice cream vendor
slowly scooping a ball of lemon sherbet
from horizon to painted horizon.
So there. I can't stop you, winter sun, but thanks to the power of a good simile, I can eat you.
We've been talking about describing skin color with food metaphors, so it was interesting to note that poets also use that technique to describe the winter sun. Consider stanzas from these two poems, written about a century apart:
WINTER-TIME
— by Robert Louis Stevenson
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
...
IT WAS SO COLD
by Whitman McGowan
...
Outside Paris waterfalls retreated back into mountains.
God Himself became an irrelevant ice cream vendor
slowly scooping a ball of lemon sherbet
from horizon to painted horizon.
So there. I can't stop you, winter sun, but thanks to the power of a good simile, I can eat you.
Photo credit: rsms via creative commons.