Of my garden I dreamed at sleep's behest

while in a nocturnal world in dreams possessed

rain and sun had served their marital ends

as to seemly beauty the maiden flower portends.

 

 

A wealth of snails ascended and infested

those comely maidenheads now much ingested

they took their fill imposing labial flesh

hart hats acock to gorge and thus enmesh

 

which left those plants like hideous widow's weeds

their petals shredded with succulent snails' deeds.

By morning the creatures had silently slipped away

on the slime of tides in the early advance of day

 

to inwardly digest their simple fare

on a distant wall as they gathered there.

I scooped them up and placed them in a nook

where stinging nettles stood up proud to look

 

like ostriches in random spiky style

there the snails I deposited with a smile.

Hours later I saw they'd crept apart

as gingerly their horns began to smart

 

so back I went to admire the remains

of clematis with their punctured sad refrains

Though God provides the humans and the plants

At beauty's door we leave the can's and can'ts.