759 species identified
more than 300 species extinct
they cannot travel backward
their shells are already fossils
snails emit & follow slime
preferably slime of kin or friend
Hawaiians hear snails sing
a sound like crickets
maybe it’s the sound of wind
crossing an open operculum
snails are hermaphrodites, not she
nor he but they . . . also they mate
one’s sperm for the other’s egg
sperm to use now or cache
snails lay eggs, snails give birth
newborns are fleshy, flabby
fused to the calcium-carbonate
seed of a spiraling shell
that grows larger & larger
a mobile home that roams
the snail’s Lilliputian foraging
space, until the snail dies
shells hundreds of millions of
years old . . . traces of lost feet
from species more durable
than humans will ever be
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