Daniel Brick - Snail Talk for Rosemary

My invitation was lavish.
I planned my words to glide
as smoothly as that single leg moves
across the path of discharged mucus.

I imagined a kind of conversation
of blue moonlight and lacy slime,
moments sliding between noise
and silence, blurring together.

The snail appeared... Oh, the weight
it must carry every where!
Still with no permanent address,
everywhere it rests is a homecoming.

Almost immediately things
broke down. The snail could not
keep up, didn't want to, saw
no sense in either noise

or silence... Littlest one, I must
scale down to your level. It is
a fault of being human to always
want to ascend higher and higher.

I see you now, poised in a path
of your own devising, half-enclosed
within your tightly coiled shell,
your four antennae whipping back

and forth. Can those tiny,
hidden eyes see me whole?
For what am I really? A friendly
giant who bustles and struts

in the open air, bereft of
home, careless of his footsteps?
Or am I just an immense
shadow, blocking you from every sunbeam?

Daniel Brick

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/snail-talk-for-rosemary/