#16 summer shards

I remember when our daughter was eleven she flew to Maine by herself to stay with my parents on Heron Island for two weeks before we arrived. It was a huge adventure for all of us. She took one of my favorite photos–my mom blowing bubbles at sunset. I remember one night talking to her on my dad’s early bag phone. She was so excited to tell me that she had learned how snails move. I was glad to know she had slowed down enough to watch the snail emerge from its twisted shell and propel itself along a rock leaving a silver trail. It was the beginning of her going away from us into her own shadow ways, into the light of her life.

Snail

I go from you, I recede
Not by steps violent
But as a snail backing
From the lewd finger of humanity

I go from you as a snail
Into my twisted habitation.

And you!
It does not matter how you
React. I know the shadow-ways
Of Self
I know the last sharp bend
And the volleyed light.

You are lost
You can merely chase the silver I have let
Fall from my purse,
You follow silver
And not follow me.

--Patrick Kavanagh, in Collected Poems, WW Norton, 1973