<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">On the Backs of American Bison</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">Some dreams come ill, a bad kidney or two</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">maybe three. But no crow mourns for lost feathers.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">A magpie might. Black and white and able to recognize its own reflection.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">Black-billed Narcissus. Vain bird that you are.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">Sensitive corvid. My mother used to call me a magpie.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">In her poems, I was left for days in a bundle,</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">when my parents returned, they learned I had flown away</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">to the back of a nearby bison. What’s more American?</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">Here, the food was plentiful until they killed all the bison.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">I had to find a new home, build a nest in riparian woodland.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">With the wolves sitting around me, I told them my life.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">They regurgitated new stories for me to dream.</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">While they weren’t looking, I’d steal their food</span><br style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 20px;">I’m a sensitive corvid after all. We have to survive somehow.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-size: 24px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br></span></div><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="font-size: 24px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 22px;">- william bearheart</span><span style="font-size: 24px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br></span><div style="font-size: 24px;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></div></div></body></html>