Travel Slides

And this is the sage–silver-green of live oaks who shade
the chaparral, and this the dull, pea–green of shaggy tamarisk,
and this is the pine whose resin once clung to our duffels,
and these are the jade green bones found deep in the flesh of a fish.
And this is the man who asked: “What possible meaning has hidden
beauty in the struggle for existence?” 

And this is the coral that mimics the mossy antlers of elk,
and this is the convolute coral named, you will guess, for the brain.
And this is a picture of us, in one of those fields where, betimes,
we find an iron gate standing free where some road program failed. 
And this — this is upside down — can you tell it is the marketplace?

The oranges and egg breads are local; most everything else
imported in tins and frozen blocks to this sunny principality of cane.
And this is the sea cliff path, a baking reach where the lava basalt
grated our feet (we should have worn shoes), where fantastic forms
appear: here the head of a seal, here a window made by the sea to itself. 

How rough the lava grows. We should have worn shoes.
And what rubes we must look, as we wince and gingerly probe,
to the snails — that stream of phosphorescent dots —
who are crossing on the softest foot, from one tide pool to another 
without complaint — and to the sea with its high threshold of pain.                 

________________

The man referred to on line 5 is Marston Bates, and the question is adapted from this passage in The Forest and the Sea: "This theory gains plausibility when, on a Pacific atoll, you have opened a parrot fish just roasted over coals from coconut husks, and find, not prosaic fish bones, but delicate bits of jade green embedded in the white flesh. What possible meaning can this have in terms of the struggle for existence." 

first published in The New Yorker, August 1995; revised slightly, 2024
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