Eggs

The octopus does not ask

what about me

as she passes,

week after week,

hundreds upon thousands of eggs

from her siphon

wrapping them in bundles from the strings of her body

hanging them about her with her many giving arms

she starves herself

cradling these potentially lifeless pearls

for the rest of her short life 

she does nothing but give of her body

not a thought for the things she will never do

the ways the dangling white teardrops

have become all that she is

her existence, she understands,

has been all in the liquid suspension

and nothing more