Snail Revisited

My father brought this poem to my attention. It was published in the New Yorker Magazine back in 2002, if memory serves. The spaces are there intentionally.


Snail Revisited

I want to say everything there is to say about you
how you slept on the ceiling of a plastic salad box
how sometimes, one eye tentacle swivelled & stretched
looking updown northsouth eastwest your eye
meeting mine, curiously, the other a separate sleepy creature
slow to wake and follow the effect extraterrestrial
once, late at night, the house so still, I heard a sound
it was you ravenous unstoppable eating a carrot strip
I confess I too have know such hunger
You were companionable undemanding but in December
you died without ceremony for days I wasn't sure
I waited for you to resume movement to climb clear walls
to eat your lettuce but No you were dead
&I pallbearer of one carried you outside
where no sun wind rain could restore you the worst
I won't tell (what Death will do to the body) finally
you were only a shell a monument a memory
I buried you in the herb garden where your glistening minerals
leach into dark soil & now I want to know:
What is your shape & where is your spirit?
are you leafy? fragrant? do you flower?
a balm to butterfly & bee? then go to seed?
time passes it is midsummer & I am alive
& done with Death until the next time it happens

-Elizabeth Spires