0322 Globetrotting Snails Poem by Michael Shepherd

a great title for a rock group but
from this week, fact or at least
truthish. species have been found
to travel many thousands of miles
across land and sea
and don’t you wonder how and
aren’t you that little bit envious?
nature’s aerial hitchhiker-backpacker-caravanner
wow

seems they (they? how did the word
get around? snail-mail?)
learned (learned?) this trick
of sneaking into the wing-feathers
of migrating birds. and anyway the birds in this
symbiotic relationship are thought
to tuck them in there (which came first,
the chicken or the snail?) as an
inflight snack, though evidently
missing one or two who

when they get to the dropping-zone
(more questions – how do they know? a
well-developed sense of smell?)
paraglide, dismount, unload without a word
of thanks – you know the type – and make
themselves at home, though in an
eliotesque way, they arrive with what
they have not left, and in a garden
outside time, and in a place
they’ve never left behind… and we’ll just never know
whether it was wanderlust or simply
Intelligent Design

it’s as simple, wise, and beautiful
as any poet might imagine and
beats surrealism at its own game
or as the critics put it, extends
the parameters of vision. though
perhaps globetrotting is
a terminological inexactitude…

snailboarding?