Shackleford Banks

The wind-pushed waves in Beaufort inlet
smacked the pilings like clapping hands,
the salt-marsh grass swinging in the sparkle
and easy communing of freshwater and salt,
while we waited on weathered plank benches
for the Shackleford Banks ferry to depart,
the sky so blue that it made our eyes ache,
the brisk wind lifting hats and rippling nylon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It was a good way to spend another birthday,
a small adventure, looking for wild ponies,
remembering the long road to land’s end,
and bracing for the crossing ahead, the inlet
as choppy as we have ever found it, bucking
the big swells, tilting precipitously, the way
a little boat can do on a big sea, before finding
the leeward shallow and the silken shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked for an hour searching for ponies,
over the dunes and the scant cropped grass,
threading between massive piles of dung,
some of it so fresh it was black shining wet,
and thinking what a peerless day for seeking,
whether we found one or not.  When suddenly
there they were, four of them, calmly grazing
in a sheltered spot between the red cedars,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Eking out their frugal lives on this island,
digging holes in the sand for fresh water and
browsing on sparse grass, living and dying
their fleeting lives on this windswept island,
their ancestors surviving far rougher waters
than these, furiously swimming away from
sinking Spanish galleons in the dark night,
struggling shoreward toward this hard refuge.