Peggy's Cove

by Bill Garvey

(Photo Credit: Bill Garvey)

A tour bus turns onto a lookout. 
A dozen or so tourists file out 
to view the iconic lighthouse 
and its postcard fishing village, 

but both are shrouded in fog 
this morning. Like-minded souls 
mill about scuffing the crusher dust 
beneath their soles. They paid 

a premium for guidance and one 
might say, I’m too old for surprises, 
as if surprises aren’t why one 
travels. Yet here they are 

unable to see the most famous 
lighthouse in the world despite 
the planning and whatever they paid. 
A woman whose silver hair juts 

from under her ball cap gestures 
toward two dark boulders that rise 
from the sea. Look, she says, Rhinos, 
laughing at her joke. The guide, 

in Tartan, feels the need to climb atop 
a dry boulder and ramble about 
melting glaciers and tectonic shifts 
just as a stiff breeze lifts the fog 

the way dust billows from the end 
of a broom. Tourists oooo and ahhhh 
at brightly painted houses. Seagulls 
circling the lighthouse seem to be 

threading a needle. Three white 
bras and a pair of old blue jeans 
strut on a clothesline toward raw
chafed hands strumming them home.

---

Bill Garvey's collection of poetry, The basement on Biella, was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His poems have been in Rattle, One Art, San Antonio Review, Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The New Quarterly and others. Bill is a dual citizen of Canada and the USA. He lives in Nova Scotia and Toronto with his wife, Jean.

Check out Bill’s other poem, “Helpless,” which we published last week:

Helpless

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