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Page 2 of 5
Grinder's Stand, Tennessee
(after James Wright)
Meriwether Lewis, honest frontiersman,
what's the use? I think of you
solemnly unlocking the Gates of the Rockies
after trudging the Missouri rapids,
towing the canoes towards the western ocean.
You reached the coast by November, 1805,
after hailstorms on the prairie, the Continental Divide,
where all the old myths of blue-eyed Welsh Indians
and unbroken waterways
scattered avalanche rocks as they careened
down the canyons of the Bitterroot Mountains.
But it is now the third millennium, and the rock piles
of Bismarck, Omaha, Kansas City
build us our new White Cliffs of the Missouri.
Where is Clark, the friend you loved?
whose bed-side manner nearly killed you
prematurely.
Sacagawea's face is golden now, nestled
in our pockets, her people a remnant
of what they once were, the fur-traders
broke all your promises.
Upon your return Perseus becomes you,
chasing various Andromedas around the maypole
of Polaris. Did those women you courted
see Medusa's severed head
concealed at your side,
afraid they'd also be turned to stone?
And at your journeys end down the Natchez Trace,
did you at last discover the pass to Pacifica?
Or have you been staring down a pistol barrel
for two hundred years?
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