Could we collect enough sea shells?

I haven't kept a sea shell for at least two years.

Today I picked up a shell and it had a perfect spiral--
spiral like the curled necks of osprey and
croissants in bakery windows--
 
the shell was falling into herself 
like the reluctant bed sheets of the tide
The shell would not sleep until they could meet
their dinner-plate lover on the place mat
of the full moon. The shell was a coin battered 
with in the street markets between the rocks--
hollowed out by the cupped palms of a heron
that was also a village potter--
sold her to buy croissants--

And the baker was also a sand dune
whose daughter wore the shell as an anklet--
she had wanted to drift into the sea--
she said she didn't want to be round and
sun blister-- "bury me deep like promises,"
she said--

only to lose the shell to the fingers 
of a human-- standing as with bird legs
in the sand-- wind walks across their 
body like a sand dune-- pulling off
freckles and tossing them into surf
like broken pieces of shell and unhatched
horse shoe crab eggs--

They want to follow the dune into
the sea-- wear the spiral like a portal
into a world where only the heron
remembers to buy croissants on Mondays.

Could we ever collect enough sea shells?
Could we really ever?

And I threw it back for the plankton
to mistake for a church.