The Last Sun Dance

Kiowas, 1890

They walked through the plains
they hid behind rocks
they sat still as small trees
they galloped without rest

the buffalo were gone.

And where the freshly killed
buffalo head would have been
impaled on the pole, axis mundi,
the center of the world

somebody draped an old hide.

There’s no likeness for this.
Except maybe the bible.

If that book could walk

if that book in a time of famine
could appear and walk out
and open its ribs, and let
each red word be eaten.