The Dance of Snails

Alarm blares
revelry over
our weary home.
Tired babies
cleave to sheets
like static cling.

Bad hair day
melt down
merges with
mismanaged marital
communication,
a relational recoil
of panic,
and we’re talking
about what I
always do again
and what I need to do
that I am not…

Actually we’re
screaming.

Friday drag
precedes
the dance
of snails.

We decided
that we needed
to workout
at the beach today.

Sunrays part
the sky slick
like Grandpa’s
Brill cream
as we step bare
foot on the hot
carpet of grains.

Shells scatter
upon the sand
like confetti on
a New Year’s Eve
dance floor.

Marooned snails
on the shore,
too many to count,
castaways
thrown from
Poseidon sanctuary
upside down,
displaced,
confused,
concussed,
and vunerable,
yet like turtles
poke from
beneath the weight
of their shells
a single foot
for traction,
seemingly confident
that the tide
will come back in.

The tide always
comes back in.

Sand dollars
shimmer like constellations
across the sand
and mark their
positions like
Xes on treasure maps.

A woman
pledged to serve
soujounrs
the beach
each day
on a resuce mission
with a bag
and a support belt
around her back
because it hurts
every time
she bends over
since her surgery.
Yet still
like precious,
fresh eggs,
every day she gathers
Neptune’s marooned
and tosses them back
to the sea
like Persrseus.
She personifies
Recovery
colonless,
and glistens salty
Life Force.
She extols
nature’s green,
green ways.
Her arms
pimple chills
when she tells
us how the snails
relocate from one
shell to another
when they outgrow
their homes.

The tide always
comes back in.

We greet
three rescued
grey hounds
in coiture collars
eager for Love’s touch
and its new
track on
beach paradise
with their Mamma.

3 dogs,
their own literal
12 Step program,
a trinity of
Recovery.

We gathered stories
as plentiful as shells
as we walked
Blessing sand
on the beach this morning,
and watched the
snails dance
a marvel of Faith.

The tide always
comes back in,
Amazing Grace.

Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah!