Octopus Riddle

Octopus Riddle


Who am I to mock and deconstruct you humans?
I've seen your eyes through the glass, watched you
Floundering, your limbs flailing the water.

I did not come up battling gravity as did all
Those land animals. Breathing air, humans
Trekked out, discovered all continents.

How utterly different from my world. My brood,
Some one hundred species, are found in all seas,
At all depths. Like the humans, we are generalists.

I am a solitary species. My life is a mission to
Engender in flesh solitary cosmic consciousness.
Only at the end of my life do I give birth.

Except for the Argonauts, we all gave up our shells,
Sacrificing them to become shape-shifters,
Contortionists, taking our prey, arms outstretched.

Let us just say we differ in almost all respects.
I have three hearts. You can call me spineless.
I am the authentic blue blood. But what I want

You humans to see, is your centralized heads,
An aristocracy more efferent than afferent.
And so your worlds grow, as entropy expands.

How different from my own way: most of my
Neurons are not in my brain, but in my arms,
Yet I can hatch stratagems, maintain a map,

Shape-shift, re-color my skin, but my arms
Are like eyes, their tips tasting molecules.
Each moves separately, as I wish it to.

You humans stand there, wanting to be seen.
But I disappear: my skin changes color and
Texture, to match my varied environment.

I am prey for the grouper and the moray eel,
But I eat their eggs, when I get back to my lair,
After walling up the door from the inside.


-JPM April 22 2011