`Not What We Are, But What We Have Never Been'

Coelacanth: the word held their attention longer than the big bronze-colored fish. When I caught up with them in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, my younger sons and a friend were arguing over proper pronunciation, and not one was even close, all pronouncing the first “c” as a “k.” It’s SEE-la-kanth, a sound nearly as exotic as the fish. My fourth-grade teacher, Miss Gertrude Martin, told us the story of a fisherman in 1938 netting a species thought to have been extinct for 65 million years. She would already have been a middle-aged woman when the “fossil-fish” was discovered, but Miss Martin told the story breathlessly, as though it were a fairy tale and she was a little girl. Ever since, I’ve paid attention to any mention of the coelacanth. 

It isn’t notably pretty but its fate has been fortunate. Not only was it resurrected from extinction – it tastes bad and makes predators sick, which accounts for its rare but ongoing existence. One source reports: “Coelacanth flesh has high amounts of oil, urea, wax esters, and other compounds that are difficult to digest and can cause diarrhea. Where the coelacanth is more common, local fishermen avoid it because of its potential to sicken consumers.” Elizabeth Spires includes “Coelacanth” in The Wave-Maker: Poems (2008). It’s prefaced by fragments attributed to National Geographic: 

“Once thought to be extinct…

lives at depths of up to 1500 feet…

dies of shock when brought to the surface…

almost nothing is known about it…” 

“I saw you in a book: bubble-eyed and staring,

mouth spookily aglow with a sourceless yellow light. 

“Extinct, you cruised among cold silences

until a hand roughly hauled you out of your element, 

“and for a moment you lived, only to die again,

in shock at a world too bright, too dry, too thin. 

“Mute, you speak volumes: the weight of water pressing

on you like an enormous question, your ancient saucer eyes 

“peering, constantly peering, through ragged curtains of Time.

What, what do you see? O tell me, tell me, tell me. 

“You and I, we live in depths profound and ceaseless,

we swim against cold currents until, netted, 

“and gasping, we are shocked to find out

not what we are, but what we have never been.” 

That is, I presume, not extinct, though dead, which reminds me of this.