I MET AN OCTOPUS THE OTHER DAY

**The Marine Biologist’s Day on the Beach**

Copyright 2012 Gordon Kuhn

Poet in the Rain Productions

May. 7, 2012

I met an octopus the other day,

An upside-down solitary cephalopod,

One who’d gone astray in a peculiar sort of way,

From those who, one might say, were his family.

At least … mostly they appeared to be

Floating there quite peacefully

Out on the close horizon of the sea

A genuine part of his genetic tree

For which he yearned to be set free.

I found him on the rocky beach less trod

By those whose feet were used to being on the sod.

I found him there standing on his head,

And sure I thought the critter was quite dead.

Yet when I poked him with a stick

He shouted, “Ouch, my skin is not so thick

For you to be poking me with your sharpened stick.

I’ve done you no harm this day

Why should you treat me this way?”

“Sorry,” I said, “I could not tell as your legs are up in the air.”

“And that gives you the right to stand and stare?”

“Oh no,” said I, “but you are upside down I hope you know.”

“T’was my choice, now please won’t you up and go?

As for my legs, I simply wish from six of them to be set free

For, like you, two is all that I surely have any needs be.

The other four simply get in the way

And I wish for them to leave instead of stay

But cannot seem to get them to understand

They are worthless for me upon the land

Too much for me to try to command

The front will want to walk one way

And the back will wish to not go but stay

The side will simply choose to stand and sway

And so I spend the whole damn day

Stuck in one spot and unable to go and play

Among the grasses not far from where I upside down now lay

“But what if they all up and think you are dead

And separate themselves all at once from your head

To leave you lying here upon the beach

That should definitely be enough for you to teach

That this plan of yours will go amiss

And so you cannot just up and dismiss

The importance of the problem in your life

For are they really causing so much strife?”

“Oh damn, a philosopher thee are I see

One far wiser I think than me.

But excuse me now for I must go and pee.”

And with that he up and slithered back into the sea

Where, in truth, he really deserved to be.

May 7, 2012