An octopus stares with great bulging eyes
and moves her tentacles so delicately
in salty underwater streams,
she learns all she needs to know
by savoring what she finds eight different ways.

All I ever wanted to be
was a rubbery watcher and toucher,
feeling every living thing.
But lately everyone I see and touch
slips or swims away, until I’m alone again,

a curious old hag with tentacles,
circling with eels, parrot fish, and porpoises
in an ever-changing current that grows weaker,
and older, as if earth is losing its reason to live,
as I am losing mine.

But no — I know why I’m alive,
as some one of you surely knows.
Where are you — you who know me?
And who are you? Tell me. Show me.
How do you grow?