By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On the green riverbank

               age late fifties

I am beginning

               to remind myself

Of my great uncle Desir

               in the Virgin Islands

On a Saint Thomas back beach

he lived when I last saw him

in a small shack

               under the palms

Eighty years old

               straight as a Viking

        (where the Danes once landed)

he stood looking out

               over the flat sea

blue eyes or grey

salt upon his lashes

        We

were always sea wanderers

No salt here now

               by the great river

        in the high desert range

Old sailors stranded

the steelhead

they too lost without it

                       leap up and die