Mollusc

By its nobship sailing upside down,

by its inner sexes, by the crystalline

pimplings of its skirts, by the sucked-on

lifelong kiss of its toppling motion,

by the viscose optics now extruded

now wizened instantaneously, by the

ridges grating up a food-path, by

the pop shell in its nick of dry,

by excretion, the earthworm coils, the glibbing,

by the gilt slipway, and by pointing

perhaps as far back into time as

ahead, a shore being folded interior,

by boiling on salt, by coming uncut over

a razor’s edge, by hiding the Oligocene

underleaf may this and every snail sense

itself ornament the weave of presence.