Sonnet for Proteus

Fathomless shades committed to memory,
But its primordial form now long since lost.
I have come to the trembling lip of the sea,
To empty the quiver of who I was.

I broke the water, but water can't break me.
My first blanket tossed a river out to sea.
Each creature that dared make a meal of me,
Groaned my belated glory in birth-pains.

I am not sure what on Earth abhors me more,
The moon-thimbled sea or slim hangnail shore.
I have found ships tangled in tentacle flame,
That know the true starless face that made me.

I am made of the unmaking of many,
Facades flaked in my wake attract worse beasts.