Sea Slugs

One lies before Paul and Pat and me on the lee shore,
a giant slug washed up on the beach, a brain-sized,
liver-shaped lump, gray and black-veined, glistening dry,
not yet baked, secreting mauve fluid onto Shell Island Shards.

A second swims up with a muscular grace angelic
from the depths like a manta ray flying up the rising floor
to beach beside the first as if to share its fate.

With a forked stick I rescue the first and
restore it to the lee waters; it revives.
The second throbs on the beach.
Set again in the current it re-asserts its will
and beaches again. The first is vanishing below.
Rescued a second time the second seems to realize
its change in fortune; yet stretching its wings
from its lump of a body it glides off the other way,
refusing to provide me with a symbol of romantic re-union,
ungrateful blob that it is.

Paul and Pat board, he to the tiller, she to the lanyards.
Shouldering the bow off the beach I inch the keel
out of the sand. Staining to catch the current,
I draw myself from the chest high surf,
from just-cleared rudder depths.
My legs and arms and back surge with uncommon prowess as
I draw myself onboard, a hero in my own eyes again, despite
the slug that arises to watch us go,
mocking me with its lumpy realism.