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jwesley
Member Rara Avis

since 2000-04-30

Posts 7563
Spring, Texas

0 posted 2008-03-07 08:06 AM

...a couple of us were speaking this morning about another's visit to the zoo and Bison she saw - it brought to mind these two pieces from years ago - hoped they would be interesting to you today.  jimmy

Buffalo Call

Winter’s cold was leaving the high plains.
Ice and snow that covered all for so many months
was now patches of white, puddles of water.
New green grasses were growing,
big-horn sheep were moving back to the mountains,
geese and other birds, heralds of spring,
were in the air, their calls stirring the blood
of the People rising with the morning sun.
Spring whispered in the wind,
its tendrils of warmth mixed with the chilly
winters breath of night,
fires were lit, revived, the morning meal begun,
and hunters prepared their weapons.
Several weeks had passed
since the last of their meat.
Their forays had been fruitless,
all in the tribe were gaunt, thin.
A brave lifed his head sniffing the air,
then another, and a woman…
soon all in the tribe were on their feet
noses testing;  then,
far off to the south they heard it….
Buffalo!
The buffalo were coming!
Their pungent smell preceeded them,
their bellows, grunts and deep-chested snorts
could just be heard…
Shouts and whoops,
hunting cries filling the air;
Drums picked up the beat, chants began;
Braves formed a circling, rhythmically gyrating line –
Dance of the Hunt - Buffalo call,
the time of plenty;
Life’s circle
had begun again.

  W. James Beard, Jr.
© 2001

Buffalo Hunt

Huge, deep-dark brown,
almost black,
the bull snorted,
eyed the two Indians on horseback
approaching steadily from his left.
Angrily, proudly, he snorted again,
plowed the ground with his foot,
shook his massive, shaggy head,
bellowed and began to run.
Hoof to hump the bull,
half-a-head taller than most men,
ten feet from nose to bushy tail tip,
half-covered in coarse, black, curly hair,
weighing close to a ton,
shook it’s huge horned head,
a challenging bellow-roar rising above
the cacophony of hoofbeats and bawls
from the herd on his right.
Humps heaving up and down
like the prows of ships
besting the seas in the midst of tempest
the herd created choking clouds of dust,
filled with the cloying odor and stench
of great beast in panicked flight.
Foamy spittle spilling wind-whipped
from it’s mouth, the mamoth bull
cut from the herd running full bore
at the nearest horseman who’d come too close;
in one fluid motion, never missing a step,
it gored savagely into the horse’s side,
tossing horse and rider over it’s shoulder,
spun in it’s tracks,
caught the second horse square in the chest,
stumbled back on it’s haunches,
stopping the horse,
dead.
The massive buffalo rose,
nuzzled the crumpled rider,
lifted it’s nose to the sky,
bellow-roared loud and long,
pawed the earth in great clumps of grass-dirt,
shook it’s great body
and, again, began to run…

w. james beard, jr.
©2001

LadyTom
Member

since 2008-02-29

Posts 353
LA, CA