A Paean

There’s poems writ and paeans praising
A lover’s eyes or deeds amazing
Songs have been sung or chants recited
For landscapes that have souls delighted
And here and there a verse may tell
Of a flower that is blooming well
But no extolling words before
Addressed a slug on a kitchen floor.
No hymns do clamour to acclaim
This refugee from the garden’s domain
The dappled flanks and saddled back,
That somehow slip through any crack
The gentle way it tastes the air
Stalks aloft, and not eliding 
The silence of its graceful gliding
And silver path it trails behind
That glitters in the morn’s sunshine
Revealing where the night before
A slug did grace my kitchen floor.

E.M. Swift-Hook