Poem of the Week: Snail Notes

Irish Times

31-05-2025

Whorley snail, terrifier in its botanical realm,
ravager of leaves with its shearing jellied
mouth. Its shell protects only against shrivelling
desiccation in a drought. It scabs a snotty screen
across its home's gaping floor. A shrew's milk teeth
could crush the crisp of its armour. As a baby, poised
on a daffodil stalk, it is a mobile brown globule
slowly pouring itself, a muddy raindrop, an uphill-drip.
Sometimes slow enough to appear still, like an inedible
stone or flake of wind-dropped bark to a cloud-high
crow. For all its ponderous existence it extols no
philosophies, but provokes thought in others, not least
daffodils who rasp at one another through their roots
at times of ooze and prowl, after dews and wind howl.
Patrick Cotter's fourth collection, Quality Control at the Miracle Factory, was published recently by Dedalus Press. patrickcotter.ie