“Because words dazzle in the dizzy light of things

and the soul is like an animal–hunted and slow–

this buffalo walks through me every night as if I was

some kind of prairie and hunkers against the cold dark,

snorting under the stars while the fog of its breathing

rises in the air, and it is the loneliest feeling I know

to approach it slowly with my hand outstretched

to tenderly touch the heavy skull furred and rough

and stroke that place huge between its ears where

what I think and what it thinks are one singing thing

so quiet that, when I wake, I seldom remember

walking beside it and whispering in its ear quietly

passing the miles, the two of us, as if Cheyenne or

the lights of San Francisco were our unlikely destination

and sometimes trains pass us and no one leans out hard

in the dark aiming to end us and so we continue on

somehow and today while the seismic quietness of

the earth spun beneath my feet and while the world

I guess carried on, that lumbering thing moved heavy

thick and dark through the dreams I believe we keep

having whether we sleep or not and when you see it

again say I’m sorry for things you didn’t do and

then offer it some sweet-grass and tell it stories

you remember from the star-chamber of the womb

or at least the latest joke, something good to keep it

company as otherwise it doesn’t know you are here

for love, and like the world tonight, doesn’t really

care whether we live or die. Tell it you do and why.”