flutters out, pale against a black sedan,
from the open passenger window just ahead. 
Traffic is stopped. The arm, separate and soundless, 
gestures toward the outer world 
like the arm of an octopus reaching 
from its hideaway. 

A barnacled alien flower, 
most of its nerves in its arms, 
it tastes what it touches.
At the Monterey Bay Aquarium 
my daughters pressed their hands against thick glass, 
and a pearled tentacle pressed back from the other side.

There’s a story, apocryphal, about an octopus 
that escaped at night to dine on halibut 
in the next tank. Fish kept disappearing—
a mystery until they caught it on film. Imagine 
its boneless body jetting up to the top of the tank, 
pushing open the lid, one limb reaching out 
to search, problem-solving its way to the halibut.
At daybreak, it billows back, flows its bulbous body
through the crack, and pulls the tank lid shut.

The Giant Pacific Octopus, brain spread
throughout its body, can open jars,
solve mazes, play catch with its eight intelligent arms.
Without a protective shell, it must be wily.
Sometimes out in the ocean an octopus detaches 
an arm to foil a predator. The arm, if it survives, 
continues crawling across the ocean floor, 
catching fish and crabs it can no longer 
feed its beaky mouth. Tasting and searching,
far from its body, a solitary arm.