Snail

I have felt rather than heard the sickening
crunch as my innocent step
has found you in the dank, morning grass.
An alien cosmos extinguished without
a modest by-your-leave.
If I can bear to look, your whorled shape
is messily effaced, mashed.

Other strongholds, tenantless, I have
turned in curious fingers wondering
whether need, age or violence
drove you incontinently abroad.
The cool sculptural curves are bleached
and scored dry by countless suns and winds,
your fate mute, uncooperative.

Uncurling tentatively your improbable
horns, you fastidiously contact
strangeness, ever only a shudder
away from cloistered safety.
Progressing with slimy circumspection,
you trail a glittering history.
I imagine following you,

down that marbled spiral.
With each turn the sounds of
the rude world retreat.
What tranquil fastness lives
at the centre of your mottled shell?
What warm and viscous Eden?

All safe. All hidden. Hushed
from the ugly jousts, those
unwinking Furies, the beaks
that plunge and pluck.
Until, that is, the indifferent boot,
incomprehensibly, descends
and cancels beauty.