Escargot Cargo

I asked Jeeves,

“Why so slow today?”

“Well, sir,” he replied,

“It’s not the traffic, as you see.

The fuel injection line is sick

and try as I might,

I can’t whip this car

to gather speed.”

If I had wanted a machine

that rode at walking pace

I’d have bought a rickshaw

or an absurd micro,

not a Mercedes-Benz.

 “So,” I said to Jeeves,

 “An infection in the injection?

This car’s but two weeks on the road.”

“There are reports,” Jeeves replied, “that a tiny snail,

Xerolenta obvia by name, sought asylum,

from Germany, stowed its

hermaphroditic family in a shipment

of Mercedes-Benz, then found its way –

or lost its way more likely –

into our fuel injection system.”

I pondered on

a nautical analogy. 

Deep divers caught with

nitrogen in their blood,

surfacing too fast,

un-dissolve it:

then bubbles of gas

obstruct and slow them down.

Perhaps the snail, I thought,

might resemble a bubble

in the fuel line –

an automotive embolus –

a case of Mercedes bends?

Hello Sun!

Greetings, sun.

You have much to see today:

360,000 babies born –

most survive to live in happiness –

but 7000 will die

before the moon:

hot and cold winds of grief

will blow on families on farms

and in the cities.

II

Are you the master of a circus ring

of planets that move demurely 

through the night of space

to a new day’s dawn?

Are you feeling piqued

by competition from the Milky Way?

One hundred billion solar systems?

(Did you really see yourself

unique?)

III

May I nominate you for a gong

from the Melanoma Foundation,

or the Society for Macular Degeneration

for keeping them afloat?

And thank you:  you stimulate

our skins to make – no bones about it – 

Vitamin D, without which –

no doubt about it –

we’d have no bones.

IV

You’re burning fuel at a tremendous rate.

Might you turn it down a jot?

A cut of 1%

would stop

our river fish from dying,

our barrier reef from growing weeds,

our brown land from scorching,

our small animals from death,

our forests from inferno.