Slug Fest

Tonight I'm studying
slugs, the way they
appear on the rug on
my front porch by
the door each time
storms appear over Astoria
and deluge the earth
with their highly charged
ions and nourish
spring's first buds
and fill up puddles.

I often think the
slugs are already dead,
they never move but
hang out in the center
of the carpet, matted
wet on the unprotected
porch, as the slant of
rains pummels the
floorboards and the
line of empty pots that
hold my cigarette butts.

When I go out next,
when a dense craving
overwhelms me, the
creature has moved to
a new position, a
trail of glistening slime
behind it, its tiny
antennae slowly moving
back to front and
again in a dance,
feeling each sliver of
drop or gust when
wind gets woolly
before a downpour.

I think it must be
safer on this half-protected
porch than down below the
walk, in the dirt, the
muck, the grass, where on
each object holds
something like an ocean
for smaller slugs, but
that does not explain
the largest ones, fat
and fetid, who make
their way to the carpet
in summer, only to
get stuck and dry out
and die in a sort
of Dante's inferno, the
ultimate setup for a
doomed slug fest.

When the next wave
of wanting comes, I
make my way to my
rocker and sit, but as
my bottom hits the
seat, my slipper slips
and slides on the
little body, the object
of my former study, and
horrified, I look down
to find that I've
quickened a life for
its demise, and
now I must do the
only thing I can, push
harder on it, smash
out its little life on
earth, on this rug on
a porch which was
once its asylum.

How brutal life can
be for slugs, for all
of us, for you and me
who try our best to
live like saints only
to give up the ghost
in a torrent of
spring or in summer
just as we ripen or
in autumn when the
macintosh apples hit
the ground or in
winter when we're
ready, when it's a
blessing to be rid
of this cold cold
world and its slug
fest and its endless
fits and starts at zero
when we're too fatigued
to do it all again or
we don't have a
chance in hell like
my onetime friend
who did nothing but
seek refuge on my rug
and found a kind of
love that was both
compassion and
cruelty rolled into
one, and I a god, a
seeker and
a murderer.