PHILIPPA BOWE

Plaint of a Slug in a Field of August

If you touch me I will contract.

I will become harder and more compact.

I will be more still and round.

And you will think, how clever, how repellent.

But that’s not it at all.

For all your heavy-brained skulls,

your books and sciences and learnings,

there is much that escapes you.

Such as

a black cloud conjured by summer storm-heat

snagged on the arrowhead of the mountain,

punctured,

spilling fat raindrops across our field,

our joyful dancefloor of wheat blades.

Until a bird the colour of burned hay

explodes from the shorn stubble,

snatches away a beloved dance partner.

You did not know that slugs are poets.

You did not know

that a slug can die of a broken heart.

Philippa Bowe is a flash fiction writer, poet and translator. Her work has been published online and in print, including by Ghost City, NFFR, Reflex Fiction, Bath Flash Fiction and LISP. She is working on a second flash novel, lives on a hill and is addicted to big vistas.