Though books have been sent to the ocean in generous numbers,
no squid to our knowledge has ever consulted a book;
though scattered showers of cash and heirlooms
fall through that domain, no squid has ever
worn its grandmother’s diamond ring
or left restrictions on the family fortune.
Squid children know what they need to know
though they’ve never met their elders;
squid children have what they need
although their relatives give them nothing, accumulate nothing,
rarely leave behind more than a pen—
the inner shell—and an indigestible beak.
The young squid spends its ink on water.
Its three hearts measure out copper blood;
its eyes never close. Look, a thousand
are writhing phosphorescent together,
mating—embracing, competing, refusing, attacking—
and each reads the others’ flickering skin,
the colors, stripes, and flashes, like its own mind.
Nothing to mislay or remember.
No wonder they go so fast through the press of the sea.