Today let’s celebrate bison –
the forty-seven released on the Wind
River Reservation in 2021.
May they thrive on protected lands
of the tribes – Eastern Shoshone
and Northern Arapaho. Returned
to their former range, may they go
on forever roaming their ancestral lands.
Filled with exuberance as we picture them
back where they belong, let us wish
we could come along with them, settle in
on the range. Not so strange
really, for we are part of them,
and they of us – part of their ancestral
dead who can be heard rejoicing.
Once, three hundred million roamed
the Great Plains and Western prairie
habitat. Envision that. Listen:
grasses rustling; wind howling.
Look: their clouds of white breath
lingering like morning mist. Each
body like a splash of black-inked
calligraphy across the space of empty
plain – a pause (a flash) between all we’ve
lost and what we could regain, cause
indeed for celebration. This is a meditation
on exploitation and survival of a place
and a keystone species meant to be wild.
Watching forty-seven bison treading
the sacred path – sacred as an ancient
labyrinth, let us sense what it means
to move firmly on Earth, to link
our lives to theirs and feel the pull
of a strong propulsion, like a terza rima,
traveling forward while looking back
at all our kin slain, left to die
on the wind-swept plain.
Diana Woodcock
Diana Woodcock has authored seven poetry collections, most recently Reverent Flora ~ The Arabian Desert’s Botanical Bounty (Shanti Arts, 2025), Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). She currently teaches at VCUarts Qatar. https://www.dianawoodcock.com/