Shell  /24

 

To live in a shell was your dream,

To build it spiraling around you,

turning inward to the infinite center

and outward through an opening

that would define for you a world.

Then, in leaving home

you found that, like the nautilus,

aside from anything you had done,

the shell was there and the note on your

door, like all notes, closed the past where

those chambers were colored: cold, packed away

in boxes and impossible to find through the

turning of small talk on that ocean floor.

 

But you were going to "Warmer Places" as

we all will eventually who write words

into winter, to be digested in the fishes'

stomach like other sea creatures, to

scatter toward light and bask in the midnight

moon of the fullest cycle this bare

rock can offer.

 

As you left you were forced to move aside

old familiarities to make way for a closing

door and you wondered if you were leaving

behind too much inside to cover the people

you had been, separate from the shell, to

wonder if you were well enough hidden by

the outside from the inside to make room

for someone else, or in closing that door, to

notice which way it swings through each

separate article wrapping your interior

from wall to windswept whatever: shelves

of shells which painted for you your dreams.

 Now, a hermit crab lives in your house

and he can not distinguish your past 

from all of that mother of pearl.

 

24.