In response to May Swenson's poem "Bison Crossing Near Mt. Rushmore"

I want to live more like the wild bison and less like the cars twining the highway.
I want to go where nature leads me.
Right now it is telling me to stay. Stay here.  I tug at the reins but the city holds me firmly.  "This is where you belong," she whispers cunningly.


Together Minneapolis and I will battle through life.  Together this place and I have become intertwined.  Her rivers roil and beckon and call to me, "This is your destiny, your dream.  Let us stay and form and be formed by each other."


This land of the many glistening waters urges me to bury my feet and stiffen my trunk and to stand firm and tall and proud in her soil.  To be nourished by her soil and sheltered by the grandfather trees towering above me, shedding their wisdom down past my limbs each autumn.


I weep at the steadfastness of my feet and the transience of those who take shelter under my limbs.


I continue to grow.