How Simile Works

The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys 
of some city; 
                      and the brickwork back 
of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise 
they'd set me astride, at the "petting zoo"....

The taste of our squabble still in my mouth 
the next day; 
                      and the brackish puddles sectioning 
the street one morning after a storm....

So poetry configures its comparisons. 

My wife and I have been arguing; now 
I'm telling her a childhood reminiscence, 
stroking her back, her naked back that was 
the particles in the heart of a star and will be 
again, and is hers, and is like nothing 
else, and is like the components of everything.