The snail upon my bathroom window,

I have no idea how you got there,

for did you fall from grace

or seagull’s beak, for surely

you never struggled, slimed your way

up the wall, fashioned by intrigue,

plotted and manoeuvred past your ability

to reach such dizzy heights;

you surely must have had help

to see beyond your narrow scope.

 

I understand if a seagull

or some other winged bird

spat you out because you tasted

off colour, blue, too raw, undercooked

and overpriced, for who wants the taste

of slime in their mouth, not even

a seagull with ravenous hunger

in its bottomless stomach

wants that sour memory

of having picked you out.

 

You grip for sheer desperate life

on the dimpled glass

and I have no way to lever you off,

to get rid of you, I cannot flick

through glass, I cannot fashion

a narrow enough stick to poke

you with as you hide in your shell,

nor can I just simply ignore you,

let you sleep on my bathroom window;

for you block a little ray of sunlight.

 

Perhaps you are dead,

for the climb up the forty foot wall

must have taken you a life time,

a snail’s age,

as if I would climb up Everest,

but then I am not that inquisitive to see

the world below from such a height,

I leave that to the snails, the insects,

the birds, the seagulls in white as they

shit upon us below and cling desperately

to the clear dimpled window and avoiding

joining your sisters in the boiling pot.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016