Chamberlain, William

English

University of Montana

CutBank Volume 1 Issue 16 CutBank 16 Article 11 Spring 1981 The Lost Journal of Meriwether Lewis William Chamberlain Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cutbank  Part of the Creative Writing Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Chamberlain, William (1981) "The Lost Journal of Meriwether Lewis," CutBank: Vol. 1 : Iss. 16 , Article 11. Available at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cutbank/vol1/iss16/11 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in CutBank by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact scholarworks@mso.umt.edu. William ChamberlainM E R IW E T H E R  LEW IS: Co-com m ander of an expedition to the Pacific Ocean, 1804-6. Found  dead under mysterious circumstances, either murdered or a suicide, in central Tennessee, Oct. 11, 1809.THE LOST JOURNAL OF MERIWETHER LEWISFort  Clatsop,Feb. 20, 1806Have I come all this way but to stare at grayness?(It was Gray, too, who first ran this bar, an apparition, sails so white shouting skipped the river like stones!)My maps mold and smear. Ants of rust crawl my rifle.Once I was proficient at aiming, measuring. N othing escaped the ire of my rifle, my will. Days, I collected specimens and fossils for the President, nearly a father, who does not send a ship to retrieve me from  the rain.I encase myself in pelts of the Sea Otter, nights,and give off my derangement like breath, like steamfrom the skin of a water animal. I esteem other days,when encouraged by the season we departed M andan  Country.Then, as now, it was my legs— that rusted in Winter,that would m adden me. 1 stretched them that Springand found them sound, and full of the flesh of dogs,embarked, toward whatever Spring and West were.Tattooed with the names of English traders, the squaws lie down one long last time in their blue beads, with ulcers and sores, with their seaborne venereal.Down our path of honours 1 see more traders,(neither tongues nor feet can outdistance them) weighed with baggage, and all honour ground dow n— one step in these bogs and land shakes for an acre!1 am not a trader. I am an explorer, feverish with rain.19William ChamberlainClatsop. Killamook. Chinook. O! Rain-stained names speak more than  I am  able, as in this W estern do w n p o u r  I am compelled to be mute. I kneel in fir needles, and while buckskin rots vapouring  from  my back I pray trees catch storms like sails forever.F rom  this outlook  on Cape D isappoin tm ent I scan for a ship but there is no ship for father or son, and  I steer— to camp by the one earthly rudder left, my own.They think this is wilderness; visages o f  murderers wheeling closer in October leaves on the Natchez Trace.The pacing Meriwether Lewis halts, listening. Suddenly, his tongue is too big for his mouth, his mouth  outsizes his head and his head is a wreath o f  smoke above the creatures that run fo r  his money saying: this is wilderness. Cottonwood leaves are falling, over empty cartridges, over their spent hearts.20

The Lost Journal of Meriwether Lewis

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The Lost Journal of Meriwether Lewis

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