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lyrics

Above the Surface

Only five percent of slugs live above the surface, it is said

Though how they survive with no legs, no arms, no bones, no shell is a mystery to me. It seems they would be much safer in dark ground

Are they like the worm, whose entire body is an extended digestive tract – mouth to stomach to anus in one straight line? Their task simple: to eat, decompose, enrich. Create soil. They don’t need eyes

What is my task? Why so many complicated systems? Lungs, heart, veins, arteries, capillaries … that’s easy. We need oxygen to survive

But why legs? Why not trunk and roots like the limegreen-leaved honey locust tree which grows beside that amethyst jewel of a house against slate-grey summerstorm sky?

And why arms? Things keep slipping from me, slinking just out of reach. Why not branches on which the crossbill finch, russet, yellowgreen, and the iridescent blue-crested stellar jay could roost?

And why bones? So easily broken by sticks and stones and words. Words said. Unsaid. Would I not be better off without them? More able to curl into a ball or burrow into fecund earth?

And why not a shell into which to retract when danger is sensed?

As children, we would pull snails off the white-tiled walls of my godfather’s fish market, feeling the tug, hearing the shhhuck then touching each tentacle with a curious fingertip to watch the slow dance of retreat

Or to be a hermit crab, to find refuge in someone else’s carapace

or, like Eliot, a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas

credits

from The Cowichan Series, released June 1, 2019

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Jim Jackson Calgary, Alberta

Jim Jackson is a Calgary Herald bestselling author, reluctant gentleman and dabbler in the dark arts of blues music. Jim’s mission is to give – in these troubled times – intelligent escapism for modern readers and listeners.

Find out more at jacksontron.com
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