the air gun & the stuffed pony
BY CORRIE WILLIAMSON
at the Virginia Military Institute Museum in Lexington, VA
It may not be his & yet it may – the gun
Lewis carried from Philidelphia
to the Pacific, the one he called
great medicine & set off, smokeless,
pneumatic, sans muzzle flash &
gunpowder cloud, flintlock-free
& firable in rain, to amaze
the natives & which he accidentally
shot through the hat of a passerby,
grazing her temple, before the
expedition had even departed.
It gleams behind glass. Yes, I think
it beautiful, but in the way of true
tools: the tale of its travels,
the hands that touched it. Speaking
of tools, I can’t help but wonder how
often they run the vacuum in that
glass case above my head, where
stands Stonewall Jackson’s stuffed
pony Little Sorrell, who lived long
after Jackson’s death first as a POW,
then a tourist attraction at southern
fairs & rebel reunions, at the end
held up for visitors in his feebleness
by a sling round his belly, till the sling
slipped, Sorrell fell to the floor, & broke
his back. Fortunately you don’t need
a horse’s bones to stuff him. His
skeleton’s ashes lie buried at his
master’s feet, while his hide dims
under museum lights, the tufted
hair released in gentle molting,
its decay wholly, holy, despite delay.
