Bermuda
When we walk down the bleached-out wooden stairs
to the beach and lie on our backs
on the blue and white chaises
near the edge of the water
on this dot in the atlas,
this single button on the blazer of the sea,
we come about as close
as a man and a woman can
to doing nothing.
All morning long we watch the clouds
roll overhead
or close our eyes and do the lazy
back-and-forth of talk,
our voices flattened by the drone of surf,
our words tumbling oddly in the wind.
It's Good Friday here, hundreds of miles
from any mass of land,
thousands from Calvary.
Wild hibiscus twists along the roadsides,
the yellow-breasted bird sings its name,
and all the stores are closed
because today is the day to make hot cross buns
and fly kites from the beaches-
to eat the sweet cross,
to fix with a string a cross in the sky.
The white sand heats up
as one of us points out the snout of a pig
on the horizon, and higher up
a gaping alligator poised to eat a smaller cloud.
See how that one is a giant head,
like the devil wearing glasses
you say, but my eyes are shut against the sun
and I only hear your words,
softened and warped by the sea breeze,
telling me how the head is becoming a bicycle,
the high-wheel kind on playing cards,
while the sea rushes in, falls back-
marbles pouring endlessly onto a marble floor-
and the two of us so calm
it seems that this is not our only life,
just one in a series, charms on a bracelet,
as if every day we were not running
like the solitary runners on the beach
toward a darkness without shape
or waves, crosses or clouds,
as if one of us is not likely to get there first
leaving the other behind,
castaway on an island
with no pink houses or blue shutters,
no plum-colored ones trimmed in cream,
no offshore reef to burst the waves into foam,
and no familiar voice being bent in the wind.
-Billy Collins