Poetry Archives

Apart from its voracious appetite for mammalian blood
little is known of the leech’s ways.  Does it know love or
family life? is there communication?
Leaf litter’s monster weapon, what can you say
about one of Nature’s torture devices, except that it leaps
like a super gymnast aimed at the veins and was programmed
with invisibility and infra-red detection a billion years ago.
Don’t credit the leech with any life force nobility
—a sense of fair play is hard to attribute to
invertebrates—it exists only to suck blood.
Without the vampire’s savoir faire the leech won’t
attain mythical status, it’s just a vicious slug
waiting for the main chance.  Leeches fight like hell
yet have never killed.  Defending the swamp,
the leech means business.