Under a Hazy Sun

Without the sun to lift this dreary weather, we
might lose our confidence in Nature—that faith
that hovers above our human body’s frailty.

Before Mother Earth inspires spring, its wraith 
of furrows will tow us through wending places
but guide our passing, as if a living breath.

In sweat that freezes, I recognize their faces,
these men who heft logs into place. They are bold,
with hearts combining into every crafted brace.

With winter’s numbing cold, they tightly hold
onto hope, and build the frames of solid hearths
from muddy wattle into a chimney’s scaffold.

Their efforts could comprise our only worth,
these huts the tumbled columns of an ending
for this, a story urging outwards towards myth.

To those who seek its truth by the telling
a squared, plumbed measurement does matter
as value and as pleasure expressed in the doing.

At noon I write, as Floyd arrives with a letter
from Lewis who supports McFarland’s intention
in claiming expenses he justly incurred, after

sustaining troops during the Whiskey Rebellion.
I walk up the hill for a meridian with sextant,
for the latitude of our camp under a hazy sun.

Then, I order Shields and Floyd out to hunt
for turkeys roosting above in thickening sleet.
The keelboat needs adjustment of stores in front.

As we wade hip-deep in the ice on freezing feet
for barrels to carry ashore and stack under guard,
we pound the loose pries with mallets to reseat.

Yet the Boat tilts farther, and harder aground,
and there is nothing more we can do or replace.
A frosty mist hinders the work, and has slowed

even the chimney builders, so I have them place
two Commissary horses in taking the load
from men’s shoulders, dragging logs in traces.

With teams, our hauling men now stride the road
enthused with new and more hopeful emotions.
The happy alterations have changed their mode

of work, diminishing fears and predilections
that Old Hermit Winter might not care to flee
the sapling’s leaf, preferring to keep them frozen.

With more horses and eight more men, Drewyer
returns, although none of them are in readiness.
The men stand idle like rotted poteaux-en-terre,

as a wall without apparent worthiness.
I send for another team of horses and for corn
and turnips from Griffeth’s farm, when a witness

from past campaigns does visit me this morn—
a Delaware Chief of the Greenfield Treaty
which ceded much land. Our greeting is sworn

in remembrance, and we talk with whiskey,
a bottle which he declares is good. At best,
this welcome has stayed the raw weather, as we
huddle in huts with his Indian words, and rest.

“Under a Hazy Sun” is an original history-based poem adapted from: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Volume 2, (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 134-40.

Fresh Venison

A boon! The hunters hang the air with deer
recovered, swinging frozen, the blind fetch
made easy since far off it’s crows we hear
around those heaps of guts in a snowy ditch,
like a wallow of blood. While Drewyer again
hangs three more, plus turkeys at the fork,
a fourth is added by his Indian. The other men,
who lately arrived, have now begun to work—
to set a roof upon their hut without more loss
of my good opinion, which does mend. To folks
in the country, I send Shields paddling across
for butter, where he does well to avoid a soak
from pirogues trading south toward St. Louis.
A Frenchman, stops to visit, and confides in me
that several good voyageurs wish to join us,
as engages who know well the lower Missouri,
but he holds a strong concern for retaliation
from the Spanish Commandant, as his authority
remains absolute. I talk of our new possession
of Upper Louisiana, promising to pay a fee
for their knowledge, come spring to the Ocean.

“Fresh Venison” is an original history-based poem adapted from: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Volume 2, (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 140-41.

Mark B. Hamilton works in diachronic forms to transform content. Along with his scholarly expertise in the era of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1803-1806, he has traced their entire route on their approximate time-table, traveling as they did by paddle and pack mule—a 3-year, 8,000 mile journey. A forthcoming volume of traditional verse, 1803: The Wintering, won First Honorable Mention for the Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize. Based upon the journals of Captain William Clark while at Camp Dubois, during the winter of 1803, this book will be available from Finishing Line Press in January 2026.