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The Buffalo
No one’s exactly sure how this buffalo in the 1960s
Found its way to live in the heart of the city
How it separated from a sky stampede
How the great beast dropped its guard and refused to riot
With the rest left to genocide
Like a plummeting thundercloud the buffalo grazes its saliva rain
Across an offshoot of a sweet grass park
Two miles from the high rises of downtown
The park and the buffalo someone’s good imagination
About prairie dogs antelope turtles and yes a buffalo
Thought the animals could be tricked to think
Smokestacked Lansing as a flat windy home
Ignore the fences
The gunpowder white faces
Staring
The shaggy hippie never moves
Every time my mom and dad drive me by
Lost
On the way to the University Club
But to catch a glimpse of such a rarity
From a dirty kid in the backseat
Was the real highlight of Sunday brunch with exclamations
“There it is! I saw it!”
The buffalo’s noble anger never looks
Over
His mound of molting shoulder
Cornered in himself
Like drinking fog
Imperceptibly taking the Earth’s wet tall grass to his mouth
I wonder if such a creature can feel its loneliness?
If any of us
Can know of our own isolation?
I think so
For even as a modern bandit
I could instinctly understand that
As I grow much older and stand as still
To that now disappeared wonder
I think
And remember
More than ever.
Copyright ©
Robert Trezise Jr.
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