Why don’t you like him, I teased
holding his sticky spineless body blob
to the boy who loved eagles and orcas.
He said something about the wetness
about think venom which numbs tongues
and becomes a glump of nothing, sprinkled with salt.
But I like this about banana slugs
—this gentleness which re-morphs
lost limbs back to labor.
I like their hunger for cleaning evidence of death
content to build ecosystems between green blades,
without care for treetops or sea creatures.
I came to Washington a carcass, hoping
to belong with the wood nymphs;
to be siloed by siren song.
But it was brown speckles on the yellow slug
that reminded me that we have tiger in our dna.
The two of us got along nicely.
For what’s not to love about alien antlers as eyes;
about a thing sprouted, antennae first from the dirt,
or flung down from the sky, tightly clung to ancient asteroids?
The boy squealed when he slipped on goop
but the mucus stayed crawling calm, concerted, patient;
paying attention to between my toes, rooting.
I wanted to see the world how he saw it
so I laid my head down on the grass to watch him pass.
He just kept rolling along, and I felt at ease.
For what’s not to love about me if I can love
the slime shine kind of beauty in small putrid impossibilities?