Angels of Grace
One afternoon during the summer of my eleventh year,
After returning soda bottles, two pennies apiece,
Thirty-eight cents, minus a nickel for baseball cards,
I met up with a striped snail, shooter-marble sized,
Halfway across our sidewalk, heading for the tree lane,
Heading for the curb, and—God knows why—the street.
Picking him up, watching him pull himself up and in,
I took him to my mother’s backyard rose garden.
I placed him on some moist mulch and sat beside him
Where--having nothing better to do than reading
The cards and chewing the gum—I waited for him
To remerge, look around again with his eyes up
On stalks, and set off towards my mom’s zinnias.
Six decades later, I yet thank him for help along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment