S N A I L Poem by Elizabeth Spires

I watch you traverse the long green table
your trail slick & shiny then pluck you up
& hold you wet & glistening in my open hand

You are a dusky brown your mottled shell attached
by a wrinkled skinlike mantle to the rest of you

Touched your eyes on long tentacles
retract & you have to shorter lower tentacles
that feel the ground in front of you first one
then the other up & down carefully they touch the ground

Like someone feeling her way along a pitch-black-corridor
with no way of knowing where she is going
like me perhaps

Your radula spiked & ragged black mouthhole
tears up & chews chalk & lettuce that is all
you need chalk & lettuce!

For you there is no fight or flight
startled you contract into your shell & wait
for Danger to tire & walk away

A slow-going-forward a staying-very-still that is you
speechless creation that leaves me finally speechless

Sometimes I cannot bear the world
the beauty & perfection of a snail created
by the same Creator who created me

But we are different you are lowly & humble
you have grace & compression whereas I am awkward
& huge & not humble forgive me

Do you see me? is the world seen
from your wary waving eye stalks a perfect circle?
you see ahead of & behind you a thing
I cannot do do you too feel terror?

I monster that I am bow down before you