An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org



Song of a Bison
By Sam Gold

Thunderers of old across the plains,
Wise ghosts of my blood, hear my grieving song!
The first of the winter slaughter fests, though past,
Took away my love and our unborn babe,
Staining with fear the frozen hills and fronds
Blurred by an intermittent deluge of tears.

Are they with you now in ethereal peace,
Nourished by wild grasses and waters that flow?

Alive was the snow once, alive the sky!
And she was my reef, my light, my joyous ode!
We laughed and romped and loved yet understood
That heaven’s gifts were ours for a brief time,
And our simple joys kept time at bay

Before the dark epiphany—the Masters'
False cup, the tyranny of lies that gird
Their world and its cold theater of gloom.
We’d known no part of the cascades of evil!

They tortured her before they sold her flesh.
They beat her bloody and held her in chains.
The child remained in darkness to the end.
And I, unhinged by the news, could find no rest,
And though alone no leaf of solitude,
And free to roam could scarcely take a step

As now. O prison walls of destiny!
O twisted minds and protocols of men!
Desist from our sinews and delve into thy souls!

Photography © by Jim Robertson, Animals in the Wild