Snails – Poem | mareymercy.

Snails

Annie Dillard wrote
about them once, how they followed
a circular trail of slime
for weeks without changing
direction, their reluctance to alter
course almost killing them off,
the need of sustenance reaching the critical
before any would deviate,
even the slightest, to survive.
I know how that feels — a process
ancestral, intestinal, ingrained;
fleshy and dense as a slow organ
producing its juices, leaving a scrawl
across my front porch thick
and tremulous as an old widow’s signature
on a bad check, or a trail of relatives
honing in for Christmas dinner.

7 thoughts on “Snails – Poem”

Wow! This came from a deep place…….. I love deep places…. the metaphor of how life can be sometimes, struggling on regardless of the things that threaten our hearts and our sense of easiness, the joy of life itself……. i love the image of the slow organ and the tremulous scrawl of an old woman’s signature on a bad check!!!! Very,very nice……..

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