The Shaggy Sentinels
written by: Gerry S. Wojtowicz
They were once like dark shadows
lumbering across the shimmering plains,
until they were expunged,
their white wind worn bones now nearly all that remains;
those great dumb creatures
that would watch their brethren
fall beside them from silent bullets three inches long,
fired from so far away they wouldn’t know enough to run,
and so were slaughtered first to warm the shoulders
of men from the east
who dreamed of conquering the West
by selling the hides of that doomed beast,
and then by the proxies of the railroad men
who would hunt the shaggy sentinels nearly to extinction
so that the red man whose life depended on them
would wither away like a hollow benediction,
and thus, finally, open the west to be settled and savaged
by those who lusted after shiny nuggets of gold,
who gave no thought to the decimation of two noble races
that once owned the open plains and were a wonder to behold.
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