Homage to Walcott

On an instinct not to be denied,

On an instinct not to be denied,

the eel-fry leave your ocean, Master,

and swim homing into my childhood

where I lived near the teeming river.

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I have gathered enough at low tide

to be called back to the open coast

you save from freezing by your cadence.

One of your logs, lying on Cross strand

with its delicate frills of bivalves,

was delivered from your epic island.

Those little hangers-on were like sails

for a thinnest fleet that the shoreman

raises now for his own occasion

as he floats that log and trusts the waves

to lift him in the sea's true scansion