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 the 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 harbor

that I decided that a bag of time

should be the same color as the pale blue

hull of the loan 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.

-Billy Collins