O, to be a Cnidarian!

How do you solve that old classic, the 

mind-body problem 

if you have many bodies and yet not a single mind amongst them? 

I know I would at least be 

beautiful if I was a siphonophore, coiling 

my bodies into an abyssal spiral, multiplying

my zooids into specialized abundance, catching 

marine snow, plankton, and erstwhile fish. 

How humiliating, 

doing all that extra work– growing a spine, a brain, some bones, jaws, blood, fins, scales, eyes, muscles, gills, excretory systems

just to get tangled up with 

my many basic bodies swarming with 

their delicate tentacles brimming with 

their hair-trigger nematocysts with 

barbs popping cell walls like lethal caviar, fizzing champagne pain. 

And of course the true beauty is 

I would be none the wiser, having no mind but many bodies 

much as I would relish taunting the fish my bodies embrace and consume.