Slug

Rosetsu Nagasawa

Slug

How I loved one like you when I was little! -

With his stripes of silver and his small house on his back,

Making a slow journey around the well-curb.

I longed to be like him, and was,

In my way, close cousin

To the dirt, my knees scrubbing

The gravel, my nose wetter than his.

When I slip, just slightly, in the dark,

I know it isn't a wet leaf,

But you, loose toe from the old life,

The cold slime come into being.

A fat, five-inch appendage

Creeping slowly over the wet grass,

Eating the heart out of my garden.

And you refuse to die decently! - 

Flying upward through the knives of my lawnmower

Like pieces of smoked eel or raw oyster,

And I go faster in my rage to get done with it,

Until I'm scraping and scratching at you, on the doormat,

The small dead pieces sticking under an instep;

Or, poisoned, dragging a white skein of spittle over a path -

Beautiful, in its way, like quicksilver -

You shrink to something less,

A rain-drenched fly or spider.

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another.

With bats, weasels, worms - I rejoice in the kinship.

Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.

But as for you, most odious -

Would Blake call you holy?

Theodore Roethke 

My hunt for a slug poem has not been very successful. Pablo Neruda didn't get to the humble slug, it seems, or I've missed it somehow. For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to write one myself. Well, Roethke does pretty well, although I was hoping for more of a hymn. I like slugs, strangely. They impress me. You know, they glisten - and my gosh, what IS that stuff they make to slide on? The poem is right - they make silver trails. As a child I remember summer mornings when the sun shone at just the right angle on the doorstep to reveal a map of the slug's night-wanderings. I wondered where they got off to. Turns out, not far away - right under the doormat. A congregation of them right underfoot. (What would that be called? A slew of slugs? No way! I looked it up. A group of slugs is called a "cornucopia"! How very odd!) But now that I live in the Pacific Northwest, I get to see the primo slugs - Banana and Leopard - glorious slugs, if you appreciate that sort of thing. Very large, and royal in their procession. Nonetheless, and this is why I (reluctantly) decided to add Roethke's poem to the scrapbook (in spite of that gaff about the "small house on his back" - does he not know the difference between a slug and a snail?), because as much as I admire them, they eat my iris leaves, and this is not to be borne. Something has to be done. And it's not nice. Hence, this poem seems very true to life. (Even though I consider slugs holy.)