~

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