Halfway between Malta and Saco, Highway 2 stops a minute To look back...
Beside the road A little shrine waits The traveler: A stone, naturally shaped To form a sleeping buffalo, But etched with lines to emphasize The dozing buff's back and sides And drowsing head.
Nearby, a 1920s entrepreneur Saw money to be made... Set up a happenstance hotel Beside the hot and sulf'rus spring, And "Sleeping Buffalo" was born To "heal" and to amuse Odd tourists in their wandering.
Not much has changed... The old buff sleeps, But now inside a little pen To keep the tourist vandals Safely from his way.
The old resort is open still... Same rusty pipes and yellowed walls And rusty water Warm enough to stain Unlucky bathing suits. (The smell's enough to force The bather to the bath as medicine....)
On my way to other places I have stopped along the road To meditate beside the old stone bull...
I understand, a little, Now that I am growing old, Tobacco offerings left Beside the sleeping stone. Though not a Pagan, I can feel the distant Ways Before our Western ways Made tourists of us all.
A little place to stop on your northern Montana travels.... "Don't drink the water."http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/10443