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Starfish
When I asked a Maine local
where I might find starfish,
he replied that “starfish”
was an incorrect appellation.
He said starfish were not fish
but echinoderms, and that
the correct term for what
I was looking was “sea stars.”
I thanked him and was amazed,
not to learn that starfish are not fish
but that they, apparently,
are, in fact, actual stars.
Otherwise, he surely
would have informed me
that they are not “stars” either.