Sea Slugs

This world — we’ll never see the end of it.

So much beauty, above and below.

And just when you thought you’d seen it all,

up pops the Photographic Exhibition on Sea Slugs.

Slugs! The very name invites disdain, derision.

But these are something else: an artificer’s folly,

a frolic of design and colour, of quirky geometries

and improbable beauty — and there are 3000 varieties!

What practical use, what purpose, if not to delight?

Later I trawled through the depths of the web and emerged

staggering, reeling ; & that strange word, ‘nudibranch’

Wouldn’t it be Nice?

Don and I were having a chat

about the magician’s rabbit,

the one my dog killed,

and the killer instincts dogs seem to have;

It’s in all animals, Don, I said.

‘Nature red in tooth and claw.’

Ahhh, that old Tennyson chestnut , he replied;

that would explain why ‘Cilla and Ralph [his cat and dog]

are often at each other : ‘kill, kill.’

We’re no different, Don:

you ever felt like throttling someone?

Do I have to answer that? he said.

Of course, you’re right: but wouldn’t it be nice,

if we could take off our nasty ‘genes’

as easily as we take off our denim ‘jeans’?