A MEDITATION ON SLUGS

Or, the Perils of Sheet-Mulching

My predator eyes scan and search.
The aperture narrows, widens,
Zooms in on a gleam in the straw,
An infinitesimal movement on a kale leaf.
Not having a jar handy,
I pluck slugs by twos and threes from the beet bed
And fling them to the driveway
To stomp afterward.

The intelligence of mollusks!
When I turn around only minutes later
They have already nearly vanished,
The fleetest of them — at least a dozen — 
Inching up the shadowed inner leg
Of the picnic table,
Where had I not a calculating brain
My eyes would have surely
Missed them.

I fetch a peanut-butter jar of soapy water
And drop them in,
Not quickly enough:
In my fingers they churn
Sticky slippery slime
That will not wash off but for the violence of a scrub brush.
Then I bend to the cucumber trellis,
The peppers,
The ravaged basil.

Like picking strawberries — 
Each time I rise to go
I spy another juicy one.
I gloat over their defenselessness,
The ease of capturing them.

In the house, I pour my victims into the sink,
The walls of the jar already coated with goo
The color and viscosity of a supermarket egg yolk.
Loathe to touch them a second time
But compelled to quantify my massacre
I count them back into the jar.

A hundred and one slugs,
Nearly all fat and the color of beer.
I note — fascinating! — 
That even while I’m counting,
Another me selects and rejects
Phrases, busily arranges images
On an imaginary page.

O, fortunate species!
That can write poems while
I number and destroy my enemies!
I will flush them.

But my victory is only temporary.
Nature laughs last.
I have tangoed my steps in the
Dance of selection.
In three months’ time retribution will ooze
Into the garden:
The survivors’ children — 
Dun,
Slim,
And hard to spot.