The Ocracoke Ponies
No one saw the first ones
swim ashore centuries ago,
nudged by waves into the marsh grasses.
When you look into their faces, there is no trace
of the ship seized with terror, the crashing waves
and the horses’ cries when thrown overboard.
Every afternoon you ride your bicycle to the pasture
to watch the twitch of their manes and ivory tails
unroll a carpet of silence, to see ponies lost in dream.
But it isn’t dream, that place
your mind drifts to, that museum of memory
inventoried in opposition to the present.
You felt it once on a plane,
taking off from a city you didn’t want to leave,
the stranded moment when the plane lifts into the clouds.
That’s not dream, it’s not even sleeping.
It is the nature of sleeping to be unaware.
This was some kind of waiting for the world to come back.
Copyright Credit: Jennifer Grotz, “The Ocracoke Ponies” from The Needle. Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Grotz. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Source: The Needle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)