The Caribbean water was clear even at the shallow shore 
where I was snorkeling in 1966, on Saint Thomas Island, where 
the sand was white below the Bacardi Distillery and the sea floor 
was dotted with rocks completely covered in corals and varieties 
of algae and tunicate worms, so every millimeter of every surface 
was alive with things this Illinois boy had never seen or imagined, 
and I became so absorbed in deep exploration, astonishment, 
profound pleasure, that joy dissolved my boundaries from fish, 
anemones, so many things I had no name for, but thought beautiful. 

And then between two small coral rocks in about a foot of water 
an odd stone appeared no more than six inches in front of my 
face mask, its edges strangely smooth despite their rough appearance 
against white sand. And as I reached to gently touch it with my 
index finger, the rock seemed to swirl, became tentacles in motion, 
and an eye opened! 

		In that moment I understood it was sizing me up, whether 
I was a threat or predator, whether it should jet off to safety. But 
it was fairly cornered and comfortable, and it knew that though I 
had touched, I hadn’t poked or grabbed. I was floating and bobbing 
the tiniest bit in the water above. And what is there to say? I knew 
I was being seen by this creature from another world, and she was 
being seen by me, a creature of the airy spaces, sharing the same 
world. And we just looked at one another in a moment of vast peace 
and quiet ... and another moment ... and another ...

When the mundane world burst in with “You okay kid? Whatcha 
doing?” from above, and as a human shadow moved over the octopus 
she was gone in a puff and swirl of white sand. And I was changed. 

—An earlier version of this poem appeared in the 30/30 Project at Tupelo Press (July 2024).

Bio: Thomas A. Thomas