Gabriella Brand

Parks and Points is an interesting site. They celebrate nature and the out-of-doors, especially our state and national parks. I am delighted to be included in their 2017 Poetry Series with my poem about Asseateague Island National Seashore (the place with the wild ponies)

Read it below or on their site:     parksandpoints.com/poetry2017/shelter

Shelter

At night we hear them.
Not a stampede, exactly, but a rush of hooves.
Determined, breathy, equine. Loud.
Noisy enough to jolt our slumber.

The grandson, a city child, not yet nine years old, squeezes my hand and whispers,

Will they eat the tent?

No, I say, explaining that the wild horses don’t care for the taste of 70 denier nylon.

We talk about the two roans we saw today, off in the dunes.
They were swatting flies with their tails and quibbling over the sparse grass.
Now we lie in the dark and listen to the waves rolling against the shore, slapping,
retreating, rolling again.

Where do the ponies sleep? the grandson asks.

For this I have no answer. Maybe the rangers know.

The wind picks up, flutters the guy-lines of the tent, flaps our towels against the post.
The smell of fresh dung rides the island breeze.
The boy moves his sleeping bag closer to mine.
We lie awake for a little while, the two of us alone on this sliver of sand,
this shelter for the untamed,
splintered between ocean and dust.