If this octopus escapes an open tank,
look carefully around, then worry.
It can scuttle over land.
Longer than a car,
it squeezes through an orange-size
hole. The beak? In its crotch or armpit,
take your pick. Ignore the venom
that dissolves flesh. Stronger than
a body-builder. Truly its suckers, shape,
ink, brain: Unique. Not a vertebrate.
Breathes water!
If you see it,
vibrate in your boots,
then scoot.
FEWalls April 8, 2016
Source: Sy Montgomery Soul of an Octopus
When
I am turned to ash
I want you
knowing
that I hear your footfalls
in the ancient forest,
the scream of hawks,
the water crazy-mad flowing
down to the sea
and I want
you knowing
that I see you
on your knees in the garden
your hands a riot of colors
poppies, begonias, columbine and larkspur
that grow beneath you, beside you, near you
and I want you
knowing that I feel
your beating heart
a still-questing spirit
even with everything that has happened
so when I am ash
you will have these words
to sustain you.
Ignition on, the key worn down
almost straight now,
on the dashboard,
a pack of Camels
lying on maps among rock samples
and tufts of tamarisk.
Shirtless, you lean forward, turn the key,
a birthmark flutters over your 6th vertebra,
the engine roils in the guts of the Subaru,
purple-gray mountains in the distance.
We lurch through corridors of sand, pitted tracks,
past tiny signs to Fault Wash, Vista del Malpais,
a hard right, the key falls to the mat,
the motor, oblivious, roars on.
At the cliff, the clawed Badlands before us
baked reddish-gold, dusk gathers up the warmth
and the waxing gibbous moon rises.
We lie on our backs in the sand,
the trajectory of our eyes lifts to Perseus,
son of Zeus, who rode the winged stallion,
and fights on in the night sky.
We dream the stories of the ancients
from this cluster of our beginnings.
FEWalls
The glittering water pulses with rainbows,
tosses off colors, swirling, a flutterance –
no thought of loss or want or farewell,
brilliance for a shilling or a dime or naught
gathering the colors up again to shrug them off,
twirling into the garden.
Come back! See!
The crows screech in the firs,
the raccoons sleep in the fennel
leaving the leaves tamped down,
smelling of licorice.
Silently, the crocuses raise their heads,
clumps of purple, thin leaves arching,
then, too soon, they fade into the soil.
The bird bath stutters in the wind and rain.
The waves lapping and overlapping,
casting off colors with abandon,
casting off the past,
casting off you.
FEWalls
You are trapped in the gyre,
drifting in the ocean without oxygen
in a mass the size of Texas.
You can escape. Lean close.
You must throw yourself into the endless whirlpool,
lashed to a barrel.
You think you will die of fright
but this is the only way to salvation.
Here you start to shift your muscles into a new shape,
where the paralyzed learn to walk
controlling one muscle and then the next.
The miracle is imagining that you walk.
The sky turns gold, a platterful of sun.
You will be reassembled!
Beyond you, a bird-flier comes
chewing up your doubt with its long red tongue.
See your life whole now
skimming along the sleek side of a whale
as it careens from one continent to the next.
FEWalls
A Long Perspective 