~
One body two I am not like you
No one made a teacup from my bones
Or built a home where I stopped to wallow
No spider wove a web or bird blew
Up from my footstep — no grass
Sprouted when I passed
But one body two
Standing across a vast
Meadow I listen as your calf
Croons and a woman’s
Body swaddles me
Scented with cold cream
A mother’s moist breathing
Her smoky breath
~
Dancing always brought them
Birds sank their feet
Into the fur of the bison
Fluffing feathers deep
Above each spine stealing
For their warm nest weavings
Bits of curly hair in curled talons
Because tenacious drupe
withstood slow wind song of prairie
We called its red flesh – buffaloberry
Because they wallowed
Because they ate flowers
Because they loved their own kind
Because they loved their own
~
Thirteen million bodies
Rifled $2.00 a hide
17 skeletons an acre – bison
Floating down river
To Michigan Carbon Works’ fertilizer —
Boot black — sugar filters —
Two sisters two hundred miles
Between shared their oatcakes and tea
At 10 each morning on bison bones —
Boiling water for their lonely
Telepathy the sisters steeped
Sagebrush leaves in flo-blue china
So delicate they could see its arteries –
Smell the pulverized bison inside
~
One body two I am not like you
Each trace you made became a city
A body to shelter a family
A hide to belt a steam machine
A body born walking with teeth
A body born prey that never sleeps
Robes and hump ribs cups and spoons
But one body two just like you
I began in a shadow of heat and water
It was thunder it was shatter
A cloak my mother
We are mammals
Together – steamy and dusty
All flesh is made of grass
