The snail shell glows, amber at dusk,
a small helix on the hot road—
was it dropped here, this inert husk,
forgotten by a passing toad?
Silent, unmoving, a snail shell
spirals inward, outward, a gyre
tracing Nature’s secrets, the Braille
of tornadoes, whirlpools, desire.
The helix shows what we know
as the whorl spins without motion:
what is above, too, is below,
the vortex an innate notion.
It is a spiral galaxy,
a paradox of space and form,
of rise and fall, a fallacy
of the exception, and the norm.

Entropy nibbles at the shell
like a toad fond of gastropod,
but no amount of life can quell
the hunger of that endless god.