‘The Ballad of Zebulon Pike’: A Poem by M.D. Skeen

The Ballad of Zebulon Pike

In Colorado’s mountain range
_There stands a peak named Pike’s.
Named for our hero Zebulon
The revolution’s own true son
His father fought for Washington,
_Our freedom and our rights.

Like our country, born at war
_In George’s winter camp—
A Jersey boy who headed west
At this young nation’s fond behest
He joined the country’s fighting best
_When he was but a scamp.

From Fort Massac on the Ohio
_He soldiered the frontier.
And did his best to stabilize
Trade and private enterprise
Which provided the supplies
On which the U.S. troops relied
_To live and persevere.

Transferred up to Illinois
_He meditated long
On freedom, ordered liberty,
To what he owed his loyalty—
_What role for Zebulon?

Pike was ordered to set out
_To help our country grow.
He traveled with his men up north
To try to find the unknown source
And chart the yet uncharted course
_Of the Mississippi’s flow.

They left the fort late in the year
_Their mission: to explore.
With frozen feet and leaky boats
They scouted out the trading posts
And commerce streaming to the coast;
They brokered peace with tribal hosts
_To open Western doors.

Pike was sent again to seek
_Intelligence out west.
He took his men, their gear, and horses
To understand the vast resources
Explore the rivers, map their courses.
_He swore to do his best.

With him went his faithful men,
_They numbered twenty-three,
A group of Osage went as well
Returning once again to dwell
At camps upon the prairie’s swell
_Fresh ransomed from Pawnee.

They took the Osage to their homes
_Along the Arkansas.
Then west, along the banks they went,
bold, determined, and hell-bent
On the mission; they’d been sent
_Beyond the rule of law.

Throughout the West he’d represent
_Our country and our flag.
Replacing those of France and Spain
O’re the new lands we’d sought and gained
He hoisted high, to show our reign,
_That ol’ star-speckled rag.

They trudged along on blistered feet
_Beneath the Kansas skies
Till Pike announced to the small crowd
That up ahead a “small blue cloud”
_Had appeared before his eyes.

That “small blue cloud” he named Grand Peak,
_A beacon on the plains.
With bison meat which filled their packs
They marched for days, no looking back
Through virgin land they beat a track
_Despite their aches and pains.

Pike and three men set off alone
_To do what they must do.
Three days it took to reach the base
Of that massif, stretched towards space,
And though they kept a steady pace
And scrambled up the rocky face
They stopped atop a different place
_And there surveyed the view.

With the winter coming on
_They could not reach the top.
They were dressed in summer clothes
Without their socks, in waist-deep snow,
No blankets, food, they had to go
_Back where the party stopped.

They wandered through the mountain range
_Up to the river’s source
They walked for hours, days and weeks
Amidst forbidding, towering peaks
Through snow and ice and frozen creeks
With thinning rations they grew weak
The voice of doubt began to speak
_To them, both man and horse.

At last, they traveled past the dunes
_And built a stout stockade.
They hoped to keep the weather out,
_Defend from cold and raids.

The Spanish found them there and marched
_Them down to Santa Fe.
Zebulon would write his wife
That being captured saved his life
New Mexico seemed pretty nice
_Compared to Judgment Day.

A few months later Pike came back
_Reporting all he’d seen.
Of how the Spanish towns were built
The people there and how they felt
_Ruled by a distant king.

As war drums beat aloud again
_Zeb Pike moved up the ranks.
In 1812, no longer green,
The seasoned Pike led fighting men
To conquer York; a bloody scene:
The Redcoats blew a magazine
_To stop the charging Yanks.

The dying Pike used his last words
_To ask if they had won.
And with victory assured
_Our hero’s fight was done.

And as the mountain winds blow o’re
_The peak which bears his name
They whisper through the rocks and ice
The cost of honor, sacrifice
As Pike looks down from paradise
_On freedom’s lasting flame.

M.D. Skeen works as an attorney in Denver, Colorado.