Jo Angela Edwins

Snail Trails

cross the dusty lumbered floor
of my front porch
where I sit with coffee this morning
after feeding every animal
in the house except me.

They shine like the clear lacquer
my aunt sometimes applied to my grandmother’s nails
as she rested in her favorite chair.
My grandmother wasn’t a fancy woman. Still,
my aunt would say, everyone needs
a little glimmer. I suppose

that applies to gastropods too,
the homes they carry on their backs
whorled like jewels, or else the ones
who go homeless—nothing but themselves—cloaked
in mucus shining like diamond dust.

There are too many of them on this damp lane.
Once, when I thought slugs and snails the cause
of so many leaves lost in my flower beds,
I dotted the yard with buckets of beer.
What I woke to was horrifying,
so many boozy soup pots filled with death.
The flowers still withered, bushels of brown stems.

Now I leave most things in the yard
alone, like the wasps in the boxwood,
the groundhog beneath the shed.
Should visitors come, I warn them
that the wild and the hungry live here.
Give all of us space, I say.

But right now I sit alone,
my eyes following the twists and loops
of the long, singular footsteps
of so many snails wandering
in last night’s gloaming.
They are gone now, wherever they go
as the hot day’s brightness rises.

I like to think they meant to leave behind
these remnants of their waltzing,
a map for us—dull giants of their habitat—
should we wish to learn the steps
of their glittering slow dances.

Back to Issue IX…