*Originally Published in the January 2023 Newsletter* Derek Walcott, the first poet of the *Pierian *patrons’ Poetry Box book club, fuses multiple cultural traditions’ poetics and imaginaries in his work. Like the titular marsh birds of his final poetry collection, *White Egrets*, his verses stalk multiple continents. More than a dozen years after Walcott won the Nobel Prize on the strength of his book Omeros and his earlier lyric collections, *White Egrets *evokes the wanderlust of the *Odyssey*. Walcott’s love for all the places he inhabits is palpable, even as he returns (in ways both like and unlike Odysseus) to the islands he first called home. He eagerly absorbs the art and songs of every land he visits, every cuisine and ecosystem, before processing them all into his idiom. Walcott at the end of his career was still actively engaged in experimenting with everything. Many poems are almost-sonnets, with odd numbers of lines and odder rhyme schemes; I particularly enjoyed the aural qualities of poems 11 and 39. #@callout Reading Derek Walcott’s late-life journeys, he reminds us that we all can continue to learn about the beauties of the world around us, and experiment with the words within us. I will leave you with a few lines of the “Sicilian Suite,” poem 8.ii, a meditation on the hidden linkages uniting Mediterranean and Caribbean island cultures: @poemexcerpt{ The sea was the same except for its history. The island was our patron saint’s birthplace. They shared the same name: Lucia. The heat had the identical innocence of an island afternoon, but with a difference, the way the oleanders looked and the olive’s green flame. } Recognizing and foregrounding those cross-cultural connections is an essential role of the humanist, whether poet, artist, or philosopher. Reading Derek Walcott’s late-life journeys, he reminds us that we all can continue to learn about the beauties of the world around us, and experiment with the words within us. If you are a Poetry Box subscriber or read Walcott’s collection on your own, we would love to hear what you thought of *White Egrets*! Share your thoughts with us on Discord, Instagram, or Twitter.