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.
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
