Scribe
Take Heart Friend for Unto Us a White Buffalo Is Born
A prose poem
When my dad was a little boy in a small Ohio town, he and his posse of little white boys in their red cowboy hats saw a white buffalo
on a black and white television. In a 1955 episode of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin titled “The White Buffalo” there’s a song called “The White Buffalo”
sung by a white cavalry officer. His song tells of a hero’s quest for the mythical beast who abides in a secret valley
only the pure of heart may enter. On the television, the white officer sang of this Indian legend to a wide-eyed little white boy called Rusty as gray
Native American braves nodded along and, in the living room of an aging Ohio farm house, blue-eyed little boys watched in rapt wonder. As
the credits rolled, off went the wide-eyed posse into the wild — down the railroad tracks at the edge of town — armed BB guns and their white
imaginations. But squealing pigs (not of Circe’s doing) thwarted their quest when an angry farmer discovered the boys
pelting his swine with BBs. He disarmed the bandits and sent them home crying to their mommies, this posse
