a great title for a rock group but <br />from this week, fact or at least <br />truthish. species have been found <br />to travel many thousands of miles <br />across land and sea <br />and don’t you wonder how and <br />aren’t you that little bit envious? <br />nature’s aerial hitchhiker-backpacker-caravanner <br />wow <br /> <br />seems they (they? how did the word <br />get around? snail-mail?) <br />learned (learned?) this trick <br />of sneaking into the wing-feathers <br />of migrating birds. and anyway the birds in this <br />symbiotic relationship are thought <br />to tuck them in there (which came first, <br />the chicken or the snail?) as an <br />inflight snack, though evidently <br />missing one or two who <br /> <br />when they get to the dropping-zone <br />(more questions – how do they know? a <br />well-developed sense of smell?) <br />paraglide, dismount, unload without a word <br />of thanks – you know the type – and make <br />themselves at home, though in an <br />eliotesque way, they arrive with what <br />they have not left, and in a garden <br />outside time, and in a place <br />they’ve never left behind… and we’ll just never know <br />whether it was wanderlust or simply <br />Intelligent Design <br /> <br />it’s as simple, wise, and beautiful <br />as any poet might imagine and <br />beats surrealism at its own game <br />or as the critics put it, extends <br />the parameters of vision. though <br />perhaps globetrotting is <br />a terminological inexactitude… <br /> <br />snailboarding?<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0322-globetrotting-snails/
