Tentacled for food,
You range your underwater neighborhood.
To look, to like, to eat, to break your fast!
Before you move an inch an hour is past,
Your prey is past, a swarm of scales, an eye,
A round fish eye, a rude unblinking eye.
You close on nothing; slowly you untwine
Your many arms and trail them through the brine.
Now sailors at the surface hear you cry,
And from those heights they cannot fathom why.
For there are agile creatures all around
Who dart like flames through this rich hunting ground
And others who lie still and gaping wide
And make no move; but armies come inside.
Copyright © 1994 by Naomi Replansky. "The Weeping Sea Beast" originally appeared in The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934-1994 (Another Chicago Press, 1994). Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.