This poem is from Billy Collins‘ 1988 collection The Apple that Astonished Paris; it was later collected in his anthology Sailing Alone Around the Room. In the poem, the speaker imagines walking across the Atlantic ocean from the U.S. toward Europe. At the end of the poem, it turns, and the speaker...
I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.
Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.
But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.
Walking Across the Atlantic was written by Billy Collins.
Billy Collins released Walking Across the Atlantic on Fri Jan 01 1988.