When The Octopus Has Had Enough (Lake Revisited in November)

Miracle of your monstrous appendage
suspends the wolfish streams. Many legs
kicking open the land’s dark rent, legs

blacking the water with soft clouds
of tender inscriptions, pulling me
into the bulk at the core of the heart.

No one emerges from the heft
of salt, the weighty cold water
you bed across the earth and all

its children. Fin until you burst,
oh legs, spit your expense
and deflate, dead. Withdraw. Come

back in the pendulant white stars
speckling the shade. The hunt’s relent
poisons me. I have married a soft skeleton

and he a good woman used up.
Eyes wed to the blue ring unbroken,
blazing, stiff. Still decays against the tide.