When metaphor is obvious,
should writer take the bait?
Should she write what all can see,
then self-excoriate?
Such conundrum filled my head
as I marveled at the sky;
two swells of salmon brilliance,
sharp blue widened my eye.
But intruding on the beauty,
unwelcome imposition,
a bar of light reflected
like ghostly apparition.
It came from light behind me,
insubstantial, weightless thing,
reflection like a wall
blocking, interfering.
Herein the metaphor,
the cliché all writers dread:
how often what’s behind us
interferes with what’s ahead.
Oddments 
March 19, 2021 at 9:52 am
Wise beyond your years – “how often what’s behind us interferes with what’s ahead.” Is there a webinar on that? 🙂 My husband has always said that we all carry a sack of rocks through life. The size, timing and weight all depend upon life experiences. With all this isolation this past year, we’ve had a lot of time for thinking. Hopefully with the vaccine distribution ramping up, that salmon brilliance will be what we can all focus on.
March 19, 2021 at 10:02 am
Well said! We do indeed need to focus on that salmon sunrise! Your husband is so right about that sack of rocks; those can be some heavy lumps to tote around.
March 25, 2021 at 8:32 pm
There are new-fangled ways of removing interference from pictures, such as a programme called Photoshop. You can copy a dark bit and use it to paint it over the reflections. Your picture is truer, though your words have made me think that any scene is a truth filtered by light. Light itself seems to be ‘photoshopping’ the landscape on the go, heaping darkness over detail, and salmoning the sunrise.
March 26, 2021 at 11:45 am
I like that: light is the original Photoshop! “Heaping darkness over detail, and salmoning the sunrise” has, to my ear, a gorgeous cadence. I still labor over what makes poetry, but I suspect such cadence qualifies.