Buffalo

Spring will come and with it the audacious dirt
and corrugated banks reliquefied blue. Upstate, 
where I met your father for the first time, we mazed
our way through a snow-barreled zoo
confettied with funereal trees—final markings
of winter. Early in this still, I felt new
when you placed your hand on my neck, soft
as a moth’s wing, wind-ripped, resting, 
having awakened and fed, full with dark. 
This feeling was the opposite of dusk beginning
to lay itself down like a ghost in the long grass. 
In a knot of red branches white birds 
nested, made me think of blood and skin, 
my mother’s disease, and the horrible truth
that all our parents will die. I try to hide
the thought from you but you’ve already learned
how desolation unravels me. Things like
this sky slurred blue by winter’s music
aiming its harshness everywhere. Things like the buffalo
which has exited his den now and walks
over to where we stand, nuzzles our palms pressed
flush against the gate. It was as if I suddenly understood 
my life when that creature stepped out into the world
and kissed the soft side of my hand. Such terrific beauty 
confined in that ridiculous cage. My disbelief, my pity. 
His tenderness despite. What else could be more miraculous 
than an imprisoned thing that chooses gentleness, 
still yearns to be touched? At any point, the buffalo could
change his mind, run through the hole-pocked fence
and obliterate us. I turned to you and said I hoped 
we would be this trusting forever. I wanted to set him free. 
We were foolish, of course. We knew that. You moved
closer to the gate, pressed your face against an opening
in the slats the way a saint might approach a god 
he’s never met but trusts, and you touched his eye 
with your eye. You were not afraid.

—

Isabella DeSendi is a Latina poet and educator whose work has been published in Narrative, Leveler, Small Orange, and others. Her chapbook Through the New Body won the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship and was published in 2020. Most recently, she received a Poet’s & Writer’s BIPOC grant and has been named a finalist for the Frontier Digital Poetry Chapbook, the June Jordan Fellowship, Narrative Magazine’s Annual Poetry Prize, and Palette’s Spotlight Award. She is also a 2022 Bread Loaf Conference participant and holds an MFA from Columbia University.