Octopus

More fluid than her watery world
Liquid in liquid flowing
No shape defined by structure, only thought
Becoming what is needed at this time
I am the entrance to the cave
And then the cave itself I am

Suction cups are eyes that see through feel
Absorbing chemical signatures to know.
Each arm a being searching on its own
To share what has been learned back to the whole.
Then if my stealthy swift maneuvers don’t prevail
Black ink will parallelize their eyes and hide the trail.

Becoming where she is no longer there
A rock that moves, the waving kelp with eyes
A walking coconut across the sand
Colors are moods changing at her will
Moving in ripples faster than thought
I am a flounder, I am a shell
I walk on two legs made out of eight
Something I am not, unless I am

Alien eyes take positions where they
Shouldn’t be, but still they see.
These eyes through time have seen
The Ichthyosaurus gliding by,
Forests of hovering Nautilus
Rising and falling where hovering jellies
Haunt eternal time

In a cave where darkness lingers,
She gathers herself to brood
Seeding the future with new ones who
Already know what she has learned,
Somehow beyond the genome,
Near her already known death time
She plays shooing schools of fish
Eight waving arms with the glee
Of loving life knowingly about to end.

With ancient mind she reaches out a tentacle to know
We parted four hundred million years ago
A white worm evolved two ways
We took our separate paths, and yet
We seem to know we share a mind
That’s looking back to understand.