Sunday Market Papeete

We are in Papeete, Tahiti's main city, actually the biggest city in French Polynesia, and the first one we've been in since leaving Cabo over two months ago. We had a beautiful sail from Apataki in the Tuamotus, leaving at night, as we had been invited to local's home for dinner, and arriving about 36 hours later. This is more or less the farthest point south we will travel --we are 4230 nautical miles from Nanaimo. 

Papeete is a very busy port and we are tied up at the quay in the middle of the action, rocking with every ferry and freighter wake. But there are advantages, for instance we are ten minutes away from the market, which is especially busy on Sundays.                    

I'm always eager to find the fish stands--it's a great chance to see what the local species are; the Sunday market gets fish in from all the islands. Not surprisingly many of them we'd seen snorkelling and diving.  This display reminded me of a poem by the American poet Mark Doty

 A Display of Mackeral

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales'

radiant sections

 

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

 

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soap-bubble sphere,

 

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

 

distinguished from the other

--nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

 

they're all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfillment

 

of heaven's template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

 

at this enameling, the jeweler's

made uncountable examples

each as intricate

 

in its oily fabulation

as the one before;

a cosmos of champleve.

 

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

 

of shimmer--would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

 

to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even on ice

 

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don't care they're dead

 

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn't care that they were living:

 

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

 

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

 

which is the price of gleaming.