Slow worm on a sun-warmed grassy footpath leading out of Martingale towards Gowk Hill, this afternoon. Just before I entered Martingale's blue-bell heaven. It's decades since I last had the pleasure of spotting one.

To a Slow-worm (Anguis Fragilis) by AC Clarke

You were doing your best to be twig
bent at each end when I saw you.
Something hard to define -

the faint sheen of your skin, your smooth
outline, your air of being damaged somehow,
confirmed the link between us.

I thought you dead until you slowly raised
your glove-puppet head, just a slit of mouth to mark it,
eyelids still shut

as if you couldn't quite believe your luck
in coming out of whatever it was alive.
You did seem fragile then,

half-formed. It hurt to look at you, as it does
to look at an embryo doubling weak fists
in a belljar, birthcord trailing -

misplaced concern: you could live years
seeking little beyond the next meal
the next patch of sun

not moved to inhabit any skin
but the one you're at home in, not struggling
to word yourself into shape.