My invitation was lavish. <br />I planned my words to glide <br />as smoothly as that single leg moves <br />across the path of discharged mucus. <br /> <br />I imagined a kind of conversation <br />of blue moonlight and lacy slime, <br />moments sliding between noise <br />and silence, blurring together. <br /> <br />The snail appeared... Oh, the weight <br />it must carry every where! <br />Still with no permanent address, <br />everywhere it rests is a homecoming. <br /> <br />Almost immediately things <br />broke down. The snail could not <br />keep up, didn't want to, saw <br />no sense in either noise <br /> <br />or silence... Littlest one, I must <br />scale down to your level. It is <br />a fault of being human to always <br />want to ascend higher and higher. <br /> <br />I see you now, poised in a path <br />of your own devising, half-enclosed <br />within your tightly coiled shell, <br />your four antennae whipping back <br /> <br />and forth. Can those tiny, <br />hidden eyes see me whole? <br />For what am I really? A friendly <br />giant who bustles and struts <br /> <br />in the open air, bereft of <br />home, careless of his footsteps? <br />Or am I just an immense <br />shadow, blocking you from every sunbeam?<br /><br />Daniel Brick<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/snail-talk-for-rosemary/
