Slug Study: Desert Slug
In the cold high desert
I made an early coffee in a
house winter-dark except for
one kitchen light.
I saw it under the table:
a visitor from another climate
looking at me with
its quivering horns.
By the time everyone else
awoke, it vanished
leaving its precise glittering
route for me to trace
through a crack between the floor and wall.
This desert slug became mythical
mascot of our house.
Eventually a tiny one followed,
so my kids called her she.
Only earliest risers could observe
the slow rounds of slug mother and young.
When the weather warmed, she left
until snow came, hailing
her return to us.
After our first two winters in
that house we anticipated
slug season when she would
visit us in the dark mornings.
Yearly she was faithful. Mostly alone.
Sometimes with her young.
Every member of my family
became invested in the sightings.
Even the dog respected her presence.
A sharp new anxiety arose: I grew fearful I’d forget
to check for her, and one cold morning
I would feel the sickening squash of her soft
body under the ball of my foot
like when the weight of my
molars effortlessly explodes
the pulpy flesh from the
thin skin of a ripe blueberry.
.
Gretchen Younghans is an American who lives, writes, and teaches in Berlin, Germany.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 