Nims’ “Love Poem” relies much on the use of imagery throughout the text. Extended metaphors run throughout, and are especially prominent when the “darling” (21) of the speaker is being depicted as clumsy. The personification of her “hands shipwreck[ing] vases” (1) and the metaphors “whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen[…]” (3) exist all within the first stanza of the poem. Nims ... refers to his “dear” (1) with simile such as the one in stanza three (“[…]pale as a dime” (10) ). Though she is a “wrench in clocks and the solar system” (13), another metaphor, her ease with people is often described in terms of “traffic” (15) and smooth movement.