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.

About the author: Bruce Roseland was born November 5, 1951, on a farm in central South Dakota, where he has spent his entire life except for attending college. After two and one-half years at South Dakota State University, he transferred to the University of North Dakota, earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology, then a master’s degree, finishing in 1980. About that time, however, he decided to return to the family farm and became the fourth-generation operator of it.  

Image description: The cover illustration has a brown background with at the center of the cover a drawing of a buffalo with part of his head erased. The title is printed right above the drawing and the author’s name is printed right beneath the drawing, both in white letters.