Frank X Walker

Another of my favorite poets featured in the current Appalachian Heritage journal is Frank X Walker, who coined the term Affrilachian Poet. Walker's book about York, the personal slave of William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is a fasicnating book. The poem below gives you a sample of York's voice. Walker's website is frankxwalker.com; there you will more about his other books, as well as biographical information.

WIND TALKER

---from Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York


“I proceeded on the sandy coast and marked my name on a small pine, the day of the month and year…”
–William Clark, November 19, 1905

If I could make my words dress
they naked selves in blackberry juice
and lay down on a piece a bark, sheep
or onion skin, the way Massa do.
If I could send a story home to my wife
float it in the wind, on wings or water
I’d tell her about Katonka, the buffalo
and all the big wide and high places
this side a the big river.
How his family, numbering three for every
star in the sky, look like a forest when they
graze together, turn into the muddy Mississippi
when they thunder along, faster than any horse,
making the grass lay down
long after the quiet has returned.
How they lead us through the mountain snow
single file, in drifts up to our necks.
How they don’t so much as raise a tail
when I come round with my wooly head
and tobacco skin, like I’m one a them
making the Sioux and Crow think me
“Big Medicine, Katonka who walk like man.”

Today we stood on the edge of all this
and looked out at so much water, the mountains we crossed
to get here seem a little smaller.

As I watched black fish as big as cabins take to the air
and splash back in the water like children playing
I thought about you, us and if we gone ever be free,
then I close my eyes and pray
that I don’t live long enough to see
Massa make this ugly too.





Frank X Walker, photo by Tracy Hawkins