Directions for Travel through a Snail Shell

Which way is the direction of love?
Choose carefully before you turn the spiral key;
worlds within worlds are waiting.
The Blue Lady reminds you that to be great
you may need to become inconceivably small.

The sea snail gives you a pattern
you saw long ago in the eyes of a goddess.
An austere time lord who cannot be bribed
may explain it to you by drawing lines
in soft powder from a termite mound.

Turning and turning you enter a universe
where mountain spirits whisper like grasshoppers.
To follow the true direction of love
you must speak in the language of smells and tastes,
and make every nerve ending an organ of delight.

You must create the door and the keyhole
to fit the spiral key you now turn the other way.
Aphrodite was born on a half shell.
You must do better. You must play the shell game
in the foam of worlds in the making.