22 Comments
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Claire Wentzel's avatar

May we all learn to be this tiny and this useful.

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Tyrone Miljo's avatar

Beautiful. Made my heart tingle

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Laura Engleitner's avatar

I feel this, when it rains I'm always picking up the snails on my way and placing them away from the path so that no one will step on them. Even if they might just crawl right back, I hope that I still saved some of them this way.

(And a little story of my own, because I got reminded of it: The lady that lived below us growing up, once saw my brother and me collecting snails while playing outside after it had rained and told us to throw them all in the trash when we were done, because they were ruining her roses - which still leaves me speechless to this day. How could she demand something so brutal from us children? And what for? So that there wouldn't be tiny teeth-marks on some of her rose leaves? - we did not put them in the trash in the end, but let them free again instead)

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quirine brouwer's avatar

That’s so horrible! I was in a very similar situation where I rescued a duck who was stuck on a woman’s balcony. She kept hitting it with her broom to get it off because ‘it kept shitting on the tiles’. The poor thing was clearly terrified and didn’t want to be there :( I will never understand how people can be so selfish

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theStarfly's avatar

Don't mind me crying at my desk at work.

The world needs more of all of this right now.

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quirine brouwer's avatar

🥹❤️

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theStarfly's avatar

I may have printed it out to put in my semi-cubicle front desk space. Trying to make the space feel more like mine (I've had my job a couple months now)

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Barbara Quijada's avatar

I love the long and short versions. A wonderful example of the power of revision. Thank you for including both.

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Stefhead's avatar

Haha, so its not just me... I always knew that more would drown and nobody would be there to save them. But for those brief moments when I could help, it felt good.

...Now that I think about it, I haven't been in a pool in a long time and I hope that there are others as kind as us saving the little beings from what would otherwise be certain death.

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Wei Shi's avatar

this calmed my soul. loved it.

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Maria Shere's avatar

I love your work! It has brought me joy to have discovered you and your writing, which I find unequivocally refreshing. I enjoyed your posting of the long and short versions of your poem in tandem to one another. The long version is delightfully textural whereas the short version speaks to me of the power of distillation. I do not favor one over the other! Thank you!

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caitlin.'s avatar

this is a beautiful peace. i hope that i too can be a the tiniest nail.

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Nyx's avatar

"proof that something this small still wants to live." I was gone minutes ago 😭

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Sherry Brewington's avatar

Today I chose kindness. We need so much of this right now. You are what we need more of.

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John Quigley's avatar

Splendid on many levels. Thanks for sharing.

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Jeremy Clarke's avatar

That is so well described, especially the way ladybirds hang on and don’t want to let go. Who hasn’t felt that?Thanks for a ray of sunshine and being a tiny nail…:)

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NHLGHST's avatar

Stoooop I'm actually crying ❤️

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Judi Lynne Judy, M.A.'s avatar

Thank you. My eldest son has an email entitled “save the spiders” which he has had since he was a boy, and he is almost 39 now. We grew our children up to save every creature they could, not to kill them. We are all so very, very connected, in our most beautiful, fragile, world. Judi

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Caroline's avatar

this made me smile at the end :’) and I love the way you write poetry!

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