Poetry Thursday: Crushing Snails

This week's challenge was to take a line from another Poetry Thursday contributor's poem and use it in our own work. I was instantly inspired by the very first line left on the comments page. That's very typical of me. The first thing I come across tends to end up becoming the right option.

The line that captured my imaginaton was the wonderfully tactile "crushing snails against stone" from this poem by blogger Sarala. So here goes:

Crushing Snails

She finds him
crushing snails against stone.
He bears no malice, just
childish curiosity, a
fascination with the
viscosity of smeared
grey gastropod.

When she was his age
she used to dread walking
through the garden at night
for fear of the inevitable
crunch under foot, but
not her son. He
holds no attachment to
the niceties of intact
cabbage eaters nor
appreciation of the
responsibilities arising
from the omnipotence of
superior human size.

Later that evening
they scrape the now
dried and somewhat crusty
remains into an empty
cigarette packet and
dig a small hole under
a chewed head of
broccoli.

She cannot
remember the Lord’s Prayer
but they hold hands and
improvise and together
give the snails the
kind of send-off they
no doubt have earned.