Key West, On The Dark Side

Cayo Hueso, the bone Key. You are full of bones, Key West. Dry coral does not give beneath bare feet. Broken bottles lie like smashed skeletons on asphalt -- the death of a civilization prone to excess.

The wind here is a siren song. It calls warmly to passing ships of air and sea: come hither! The people arrive, brightly clad, with bags of many colors.

Oh, what we will carry! Maps we bring -- human roads printed on paper in the hand as deer leave their paths in dirt and in their blood as memories to kin. We drive our sacred paths on motor scooters or in lacquered cars, petrol fogging the clean sea air. Liquified bones we pour into sky: This is an offering we burn without thanks.

My apologies to the gods. Our vision is obstructed. These sunglasses allow in a comfortable amount of light, and our bodies have forgotten how to tighten a retina, pull an eyelid taut. The human experience is honed by that which does not belong to it. We are not quite ourselves anymore.

Cayo Hueso, land of bones. This is not the whole story. The land here teems with life, but bones emerge at an ever alarming rate. Decades of life in a coral reef knocked apart with the touch of a well-meaning hand or the accidental strike of a jet-ski propellor. Sea life, more abundant than most, appears to thrive, but how abundant is it compared with that of a century past? The colorful underwater carnival is eclipsed only by its rate of decline, bones collecting in estuaries behind the Winn-Dixie where we watch horseshoe crabs mate.

Like the Spanish, I ask myself: Who does this tropical graveyard belong to?