Octo

On lunch this day in Boston, I took a walk down to the docks, and found an impromptu but rather incredible sushi bar. Wrote this:

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I am eating baby octopus,
Bright red and curling
Blossom and furl, sweet and fresh
From the great yawning hollows of the ocean.

Their tiny pickled fists
Clutch memories
Of sifting light, knifing shafts
Amidst the dull deep booming of tanker fare
And the susurrant flush of eelgrass.

I chopstick pluck through clinging arms
Of squid
Their simple, staring cousins.

A daisy-face of sea cucumber
Reveals a suckered chunk
And I remember silent slit-eyes
Observing opaquely
Through finger-smudged,  inch-thick glass.

And now I digest you, slowly,
Gingered purples of the deep-
And return you
To the quiet
Of gloom.