Laced through the leaves’ canopy 
long woven, like the bean stalk 
of legend, voluminous vine, 
  
a harboring trellis 
of linked pods, you (a seed) 
are hollow, heart-shaped, grained 
  
dark as mahogany   
and resistant to ruin, until rain  
washes you out of the forest 
  
toward river, then sea 
for the tolerant glide 
inside waves in which, nicked  
  
by fish, turtles, wind, you’ll sail 
nowhere on purpose, will  
be pummeled, and punctuate 
  
battering currents  
like a dash in one tedious sentence, 
bobbing up through tides 
  
until beached, maybe  
Norway, maybe Florida, exotic 
surprise. You can float 
  
for years. You have that buoyancy. 
They call you fava de Colon,  
“Columbus’ bean,” and say 
  
it was you that, strewn  
on Portugal’s shore, a landed echo,  
led him to think there was more.