I got a story to tell. A string of low, rolling hills trails down from North Dakota, halfway through South Dakota. It was through here in the late 1800's that one of the last wild buffalo wandered on down into the township where I now live, where it was sighted. He turned around and disappeared into his fate elsewhere. He must have been puzzled at being surrounded by prairie familiarity and finding everything so empty. Where had all his fellow buffalo gone. The grassy potholed hills were the same. He was the same. But something else wasn't. There was just this big empty. An empty reach of sky and grass. He turned around and around, looking for something that couldn't be seen anymore. The wild buffalo is no more. What is tamed and fenced in is just not the same. The next migration into this emptying land will never be the migration that came into this land after the last wild buffalo left. What is being empited out will be forgotten unles our memories are gathered. Sons and daughters of land-starved peasants of Europe, I am one of the last of you. I am one of the last buffalo. I turn around and around. What once was is gone.
The Last Buffalo is a collection of poems that tells this story.