Poem: Return of the Native – Egbert Ollmann

Salt of the Earth Traveller
So very far from home
African adventures in a battered car
Exploring a world gentler than ours
Winds of destiny brought you, tumbling, to these shores
On a boat that breathed its last
On Praslin’s golden sands
From there, she called you
And for forty years, made you her own
The love affair of an island
And her man
Now, my friend, she summons you one final time,
Her old flame
To return your proud ashes to her sweet soil
For ever