I asked you, 'what's the point of slugs'.
We could not answer. Even wasps,
you said, have a role in the balancing act of stuff,
but slugs? We scratched our heads.

Take the name: like pushing purple against yellow
on a wall, the two sounds do not fit;
the sharp start chugging to an ugly halt 
with a dull 'u' sandwiched in between.
At least the French gave the slug a chance
by calling it une limace. But us? We offered
it no such grace.

And then I thought: I'll write about the slug.
After all, how often do you see them
in poems? If Donne could do it with a flea,
then surely slug words were out there to be used.
(Mind you, Donne did have sex on his side. 
There was a point to his analogy.)

But the slug? To what could it serve
as a metaphor for life, for our endless struggle
to make sense of things etc? Could I get 
a woman into bed by waxing on its slimy perfection,
or argue for world peace through reference to
a selection of its finer points? 

And then I saw it. As in its pointless ugliness
we see how out of dark comes light;
how from the thick slip of the slug's fat tube
comes a strong and tender love of the 
ivy leaf it draws its slime along;

how from its grey, surrounding colours hum;
how from the hoster leaves it turns to mulch
comes a sense of how things change,
and how a wholeness turn to loss.

So next time that I ask you
'what's the point of y or x',
remind me - even the most awkward vulgar things
in life assert themselves 
in opposition to the rest.