" One knows that in the waters hereabouts, in a particular spring,
Ponce de Leon staggered in so as to live forever.
But poisoned with infection from a local’s arrow
and conned by the legend of eternal youth,
he’d led all his people into a bloody cul de sac
and ended himself being fed to alligators
ate him skin and bones, leaving no trace.

So it may be we all now look
for where the first of these old folks went down,
seeing his own face in the placid creek,
hearing the far off murmur of the surf,
feeling his body open in the dark,
the warmth of the air, the odor of the flowers,
the eternal maiden waiting soft in her bower. "

― Robert Creeley , Selected Poems, 1945–2005