Shells

Life begins by turning around itself.
The supple tenor of snailshell whorls depends: 
Life also ends by turning around itself.
The Garden Snail wears its home around 
its slimy body. Lips of worshippers wear
away the sculpted straps of the saint’s bronze shoe. 
Wherever they journey, peregrine Garden Snails 
are everlastingly at home. Attunement
transits from beauty’s form to beauty’s formation. 
The boundless daydream of spira mirabilis eclipses 
idolatry, but lips of believers burnish
the bronze glint of the billionaire’s shoe. In attic 
or cellar, the heresy of spira mirabilis, 
logarithmic spiral of snailshells at home 
everlastingly—when dogma’s emporium
wears away amazement, attend how outer 
whorls mirror inner whorls, Nautilus
 shells and shells of Ramshorn Snail, horns 
of Girgentana Goat, Sunflower florets.
Among the Santa Ana winds that drive 
a forestfire through Los Angeles streets,
among the weariness that renders kinship unreal, 
attend how outer whorls nevertheless mirror 
inner whorls, the everlasting home
of phyllotaxis, whirlpool, typhoon.
If weary from building to live, then live to build 
and attend how outer whorls still persist
in mirroring inner whorls, unfurling Fernleaf, 
waterswirls around sinkdrain, Milky Way.
Vibrations of spring, vibrations of winter, register 
upon the flabby bodies of Garden Snails,
but wavelengths of fear interfere with wonder’s wavelengths 
when grieving the world that would be if worshippers 
professed more kithbound heresies. The tenor
of snailshell whorls depends. When attention fails 
to transit from sensation to sense, geometric 
dogma informs against the snail’s emergence
in spring. The orchestra of vastness emerges
from outlaw love for our would-be world. Vacated 
snailshell allows desire to trace its hand
along the polished walls of its nectarine stairwell. 
A hefty shell announces the muscular architect 
who muraled the palace interior, or the estate’s 
new tenants, Coyote, Cottontail Rabbit,
Least Weasel. The surplus cinema of spira mirabilis 
does not kneel before the regimen of gasflare 
plumes. A later generation will one day
excavate a grave. Inside the coffin,
hundreds of Garden Snail shells bathe the skeleton 
from toebones to pelvis. Instead of fatherland’s 
blueprint sanctity, attunement teaches
how to hear the mothertongue seashore resound 
heretically inside a conchshell. The tenor
of snailshell whorls depends. By turning around 
itself, life either wears down or life renews.

Read more from Issue 23.1.