Snail Summer

The slugs are gone. After it got warm
and dry-- by courtesy-- except a thunderstorm
or two-- suddenly there were snails everywhere.
Trundling their enspiraled shells along each path.
They left no silver heiroglyphs, nor
gastropodal gang-sign (SHELLS RULE,
SALT THE SLUGS.) I'd thought
our normal fauna's ouster would be marked
somehow. It wasn't. Still
I don't know what it means. Was it
the weather? Was some escargot-disdaining
urban predator driving slugs to local
all-time lows?

In that same month I learned that wild
rosebushes smell even sweeter after
the flowers fall. I swear it's true. I think the hips
ripening make that smell,
less of flowers than of fruit and wine.
Blackberries were reddening on the vine.
I sat beneath a tree where woodpeckers knocked.
I was a fallen rose, a spiral shell, a rock
with roots of earth.
I was snail summer, season of growth, not birth.
I knew slow secrets of untold worth.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside