What other genera can boost 888 species
whose roll call might start with cabbage rot
then roll on to dog vomit, chocolate tube, powdery scab
tuber, pretzel, red raspberry, scrambled egg, tapioca
wolf’s milk, and end with something like white corpse.
Neither plant nor animal but certainly mineral
the slime molds occupy a unique place on the tree
of life in that ephemeral place we call ambiguity.
They slip and slide around the rot of forest floors
they prowl like cat burglars
they creep and crawl like paraplegics
they occupy
they ooze like that primordial thing that first
made its way out of the sea to land
they quiver like jelly fish washed ashore

making wrack lines in the leaf litter
they fluoresce, they glow, they brightly
color the scatological canvas of compost
but for all their attempts at illumination
“they darken the air they come into”

they produce chemicals we have yet to discover
they live alone when times are good
aggregate into shapeless agglomeration of goo
when food becomes scarce lending some truth
to the old adage “two or more minds are better than one”
although they have no minds and yet there is evidence
and controversy as to whether they do, indeed, have
a true nervous system

but mostly, “they come to do their undoing.”
Vultures in that world of microbial mulch
they offer the gift of disposal for “if it weren’t
for them we would be hip deep in the dead.”