Oh, Henry

Did he know when he spoke,

Speaker of the House,

speaking on the floor?

Compromising everyone.

Was the tension evident

as he paced the floor,

tiny beads of sweat clinging to the individual hairs of his brows,

a thin mustache of moisture

over his eloquent mouth?

Lips, tongue, and teeth

pushing this idea,

no one will ever be satisfied,

into the nation’s conscience and history.

What did he want?

Surely not Bloody Kansas

or a Springsteen album

over a century later.

Andrew Jackson cold in his tomb,

worms digesting his hatred

becoming more fierce

with each morsel consumed.

Did Clay fear the earth

in Nashville, worry about ghosts?

Or was he simply exhausted,

in his exhaustion working

lighter souls in darker skins to death,

dying himself two years before

his half-measure was

Pierced by the blood

shed in Kansas.

I never knew that he was a paradox, too.

Maybe they didn't tell us in class,

or maybe I was too boy crazy

to pay attention to great men.

So much I didn't know:

the gambling, the drinking, the fighting,

the dueling.

And his amazing ability to grow, to learn, to change his mind, to continue speaking his changing mind with eloquence and skill,

changing other minds with his skilled precision

of delivery, a Burr in Marshall's side.