Field guide No. 1334
Octopus in an impossible knot
Tied up at the moment
An octopus rests on dark sand with its arms looped through each other in a closed knot. It looks calm about it, which is more than anyone untying it will be.
Field noteArms loop through each other in a closed knot no free end could have tied.
- Specimen
- No. 1334
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Physics
- Where it doesn’t exist
- a dark sandy seabed among rocks
- Nearest existing relative
- a sailor’s reef knot
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking physics
Empty lunch bags cast chicken shadowsPaper bags throw boxy shadows; under the strip light these six throw hens, combs and all.
Summer above, winter belowA reflection shows what is there. Snow in the water and none on the hills is the lake disagreeing.
Ember trapped in branching iceFire burns in the heart of a snowflake and neither gives. Something here is both hot enough and cold enough.
Daylight through the night coneOne street shows noon through a cone and midnight around it. The detour runs both directions of time.