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:
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Enjoyed reading your verses, I felt like they would be my own memories.
What a wonderful poem. I love the subject you chose. We can all relate to this on vacations. What a magnificent ending.
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