THE American poet Billy Collins has a gently engaging voyage through the waters of the Outer Hebrides in this sample from his new collection, The Rain in Portugal (Picador, £9.99). His writing, unpretentious and accessible, ranges widely and imaginatively from the dogs of Minneapolis to Shakespeare on a first-class flight from London to Barcelona. Collins has been described by the New York Times as “the most popular poet in America” and was poet laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.
BAGS OF TIME
When the keeper of the inn
where we stayed in the Outer Hebrides
said we had bags of time to catch the ferry,
which we would reach by traversing the causeway
between this island and the one to the north,
I started wondering what a bag of time
might look like and how much one could hold.
Apparently, more than enough time for me
to wonder about such things,
I heard someone shouting from the back of my head.
Then the ferry arrived, silent across the water,
at the Lochmaddy Ferry Terminal,
and I was still thinking about the bags of time
as I inched th car clanging onto the slipway
then down into the hold for the vehicles.
Yet it wasn’t until I stood at the railing
of the upper deck with a view of the harbour
that I decided that a bag of time
should be the same colour as the pale blue
hull of the lone sailboat anchored there.
And then we were in motion, drawing back
from the pier and turning toward the sea
as ferries had done for many bags of time,
I gathered from talking to an old deckhand,
who was decked out in a neon yellow safety vest,
and usually on schedule, he added,
unless the weather has something to say about it.
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