snail
Your tracks laid down with dawn,
pace at one with the bride,
train as long as the aisles of the garden
(one, two, the opalescent grip was milked—
the foot sells galavanter’s silk),
only every other pause is a swing out black,
black like rubber curls of the awaited telephone.
When it rains, you do not answer.
In your modesty, there is a castle—the apex of which
is the door to your youth. And though it
rains like a beggar at that door,
you’ve sealed the letter with your foot
for the door it has a slot—Still, your eyes flower
each penny trip into the sun you smooth out.
You move in slow ripples, a wave that left
the sea and from the shore took
a heavy shell as echo and memento.
“It was no one,” you insist,
then curl to sleep like a fist.
Your eyes become microscopes
for the stars which seem each a pin
in understanding—gold, in a grenade—