Black History Poetry Month!

Hundreds of Purple Octopus Moms Are Super Weird, and They’re Doomed
 ~January Gill O’Neil
                                                           I'd like to be under the sea
                                                          In an octopus' garden in the shade.
                                                            —Ringo Starr


The article called it “a spectacle.” More like a garden than a nursery:
hundreds of purple octopuses protecting clusters of eggs
while clinging to lava rocks off the Costa Rican coast.
I study the watery images: thousands of lavender tentacles
wrapped around their broods. Did you know there’s a female octopus
on record as guarding her clutch for 53 months? That’s four-and-a-half
           years
of sitting, waiting, dreaming of the day her babies hatch and float
                     away.
I want to tell my son this. He sits on the couch next to me clutching his
          phone,
setting up a hangout with friends. The teenage shell is hard to crack.
Today, my heart sits with the brooding octomoms: not eating, always
             on call,
always defensive, living in stasis in waters too warm to sustain them.
No guarantees they will live beyond the hatching. Not a spectacle but a miracle any of us survive.

Copyright © 2019 by January Gill O’Neil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets