Sherry Chandler » Frank X. Walker
Frank X. Walker
Frank X. Walker is a founding member of the Affrilachian poets. His first collection, Affrilachia, was turned into a stage production that toured widely. His second collection, Buffalo Dance (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), the Journey of York is written in the voice of the slave who accompanied the Lewis & Clark expedition. Buffalo Dance was awarded the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award in 2004. The poem below is from Buffalo Dance.
God’s House
The expedition left Louisville, Kentucky on October 26, 1803
When we first left Kentucke
the trees had commenced to dressing up
the fall harvest and the garden pumpkins
was already bigger than my head.
Massa Clark didn’t ask me to go on no expedition.
He just say “pack” and pointed to the door.
So I gather up what little I got and more than I can carry of his
and head off to a sail-bearing keelboat
where his friend Massa Lewis is waiting.
That boat was so big
you could lay any ten of the sixteen men on board
or eight a me head to toe and still have enough
room for the dog.
We start out on the Ohio, swing up the Big Muddy
til we gets to the mouth of the river they call the M’soura
and set up winter camp a good canoe ride from Saint Louie.
That spring when the rains come we cross the Muddy
and commence to climbing the M’soura
and float right up thru what seem like heaven on earth;
more sky than I ever seen, rocks as pretty as trees
and game so plentiful they come right down to the river bank
and invites they selves to dinner.
Now, I ain’t what you would call
a scripture quoter, but the first time
I seen the water fall at M’soura,
felt a herd of buffalo stampede and looked down from top
a Rock Mountains, it was like church.
Where else but God’s house can a body servant
big as me, carry a rifle, hatchet and a bone handle knife
so sharp it can peel the black off a lump a coal
and the white man
still close his eyes and feel safe, at night?
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