Poetry About Lewis and Clark

In a keelboat pressing up the Missouri, Lewis and Clark finds a visible shape. Ink spreading across an unfinished map carries what ordinary speech leaves unfinished. Between prairie grass hiding the horizon and winter smoke above Fort Mandan, the heart learns to listen. Exploration must be remembered beside the peoples whose lands were crossed, though the day rarely says so aloud. By night, a journal closing near the Pacific becomes a promise rather than an ending.

Ink spreading across an unfinished map enters the poem first. Lewis and Clark follows, neither symbol nor explanation, but weather. Winter smoke above Fort Mandan keeps the difficult measure. We stand near a keelboat pressing up the Missouri and let certainty loosen. Exploration must be remembered beside the peoples whose lands were crossed. A journal closing near the Pacific remains after the room grows quiet.

Someone remembers prairie grass hiding the horizon. Someone else names a keelboat pressing up the Missouri and means an entire life. Lewis and Clark moves between them with patient hands. Ink spreading across an unfinished map refuses to become only background. Exploration must be remembered beside the peoples whose lands were crossed. At last, a journal closing near the Pacific gives the silence somewhere to rest.