Amy Barone
Tatanka
No curse words exist in the Lakota culture
where the people revere bison.
Near whistling marmots and darting pikas,
for hours these one-ton creatures graze on plains.
They wear thick coats in winter, flaps of fur
in brown and tan that shed when rolling around summer days,
leaving wallows to enhance the earth with pockets for water.
Bison roam below red-striped rock in the Badlands
and on pastures in Hot Springs and Custer State Parks.
Spreading their scent, they breed in the heat,
butt heads to compete for love.
In 1890 as extinction loomed,
the Lakotas, adorned in elk tooth necklaces,
welcomed them back with a Ghost Dance.
Bio
Amy Barone's new poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books released her collection, We Became Summer, in 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) She belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the brevitas online poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City.