A Shell Tells

A whelk shell on the bathroom windowsill reflects modest colours curled twirled around its helix. It takes me back to where I found this gastropod with others dumped as spoil over a bank behind a coastal shed. In the waste of whelks my dear spaniel rolled. The sticky mess adhered to fur and fold and in the car the stink did fill my head. Back home I set about with brush and hose to clean my Silas of this grave offence. Yet this made the smell yet more intense as on both eyes and nose it did impose. At the youth club some days later, two girls had him in a sink to wash away the pong; refreshed, this made the smell arise more strong from deep within his coat and all its furls. The shell I kept, from such foul smells now clear holds memories of my companion dog. Now to complete this with an epilogue I dwell upon the shell, hold it to my ear to hear the distant sea beneath whose swell that gastropod across the ooze once grazed, growing this shell above the mud upraised until the trawler's net its end did spell. This creature's home now in my hand I feel its helix holding these events through time a small memorial here preserved in rhyme as gathered thoughts; I hope they will appeal.