Peyote
Amidst Americans celebrating
Labor Day in the Bahama Islands
(Vulgar, we thought, in their
Cabin cruisers, compared
To our small wooden sailboat
With no motor), we took peyote
And no one thought anything
Of our barfing off the side
Of our boat, which truly got
The peyote going. (Many
On other boats were really
Drunk and doing
More or less the same vomiting.)
As the sun went down
The other boats left and we went
To shore on the small island.
You migrated to the side
Of the island teeming With thousands of life forms
In the small crags
Of the watery rocks
While I drifted over
To the
side with the dead brain coral
Where it looked as if everything
Had happened and stopped happening.
We could barely hear each other calling
From our two sides of the island.
We could see
The differences
In our characters
There, you siding
With the living
And me taking
Communion among the dead.
(We knew peyote had taken us
To the shores of myth.)
I was soon to teach
At a prep school
And I resolved to teach
Your side of the island
As Lawrence and my side
As Eliot, teaching literature
As somethinig of
A living island
With its own
Cemetery side.
It was to be my first post
Teaching, and I was going
Out of my mind to find
Something to say
To those young faces.
You were by then
A veteran teacher, a natural
Teacher. You could
Step into any room
And teach any thing.
Peyote was the one doing
The teaching that night,
And we submitted and gambled
With our minds hoping
We might find something to take
Back to America, something
Beyond even where the boats go.
—Liam
Rector
Liam Rector's
books include The Sorrow of Architecture, American Prodigal,
and most recently The Executive Director of the Fallen World.
Originally published in the July/August
2006 issue of Boston Review
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