by drawing water with a siphon

in and out of her living chamber;

then jet-propelling, adjusting buoyancy, and diffusing salt,

she whirls along sand and rock. Unknowingly

my beloved gave me such a shell—

an endangered thing

as well as a house that holds a mother.

•

I love that this mollusk,

coupling, spawning just once a year,

and whose eggs take nearly as long to hatch—I

love that ancient Greeks named her nautilus

ναυτίλος ‘sailor’

believing she—or he—used two expanded arms as sails.

In my mind, crucifix or a child’s snow angel.

•

Since the opalescent inner shell

passes as pearl,

escalating its own slaughter,

my cabinet is no longer curious:

•

now, I’m satisfied with a hornet’s nest from the backyard,

snake skin found on a footpath,

coil of whelk cases from the local beach,

and, also from the beach, a stone in the shape of Jizo,

so like the statue we saw in Shibuya,

bobby pins clipped to its red bib.

a complex

“lustrous coil”

erects

buoyancy

•

Those logarithmic spirals, naturalists suggest,

echo the arms of hurricanes and distant galaxies,

taking fifteen years to mature, fixing

the prized creature to a marine list

of those soon eradicated or

left to natural history diorama,

art exhibit, jewelry box. I’ve already

spoken of my mother’s coral necklace,

inherited then stowed away

in my safe deposit box, away even from memory

until I turned in the key and there it was:

a whorl of sharp red beads

that fastened with what my father called sister-hooks.

(To the list of things soon to vanish

add coral and the Hawai‘ian language?)

a relatively large brain

like the hull of a submarine

can serve as a

parrot

•

a relatively large eye can

implode—like

home

•

After all, I believe Design is design.

Still, I can also believe that the order of the universe

—including the one in my hands,

a shell cast in calcium and, when swimming about,

whose eyes peer through tentacles—

is mathematically mysterious. But

I’m not so romantic that I can’t see

extinct as natural—

I know that but she’s lasted so long—

a living fossil

safe if it weren’t for designated squalor—

•

a dollar a shell to thwart misery, I get—

with baited depth

the

Landman

stunned perfect spirals

•

Cryptic

When seen from above, the shell is darker in color

and marked with irregular stripes,

which helps it blend into the dark water below.

The underside, almost completely white,

makes the animal indistinguishable

from the brighter waters near the surface.

This shell colouration keeps the animal cryptic.

cups and pitchers

begin a formal

horror show

•

the curved

arms of Florence turned

gold and rubies

into danger

•

I know I know—a dollar isn’t merely pedestrian.

I know that some sell the chambered nautilus for their living.

I know I’m guilty of such purchase

and do nothing to give away or give way

to the distraught