Snail Funeral

Between tulip and ryegrass

there is a freshly dug grave

I might be five, or four

black soil beneath my fingernails

loss in the hollows of my footprints

Its viscous body is buried in a bottle cap coffin

offered to the earth under flower beds

opalescent snail shells fragmented between toes

and left to heal beneath swollen mounds

Two weeks later

after my eyes have dried

and my feet have been rinsed clean

I pry it open again in commiserate sunlight

just to see if heaven is real

Because I am five

and God is far

but I hope

not so far for a snail