Winter Walk

Snow falls in a stillness 
that swallows land.
Branches droop
under winter's weight.

I walk down the trail.
My boot crunches snow 
on a buried path—
each step swallowed whole.

A little bird flits and searches,
dark eyes scanning the hush,
wings flicking silence, 
its beak grasping nothing but cold.

I want to tell it to hold on.
The storm will pass.
Beneath this heavy hush,
something waits to break through.

—Steven Wade Veatch

Ways Chaotic

Species—familiar, strange, exotic—
slip away in unruly currents,
lost to firestorms, floods,
and the hungers of the sea,
on this turning blue marble
adrift in darkness.

Climate tilts,
the air heats,
seasons slip their patterns,
and life’s choices are few:
        move
        adapt
        or 
        vanish.

Life, stubborn and luminous,
leaves traces in drowned sediments,
whispers pressed into mud, silt, and sand—
echoes that wait beneath the tides of time.

Beneath our feet are fossils in stone,
giant skeletons keeping their watch;
leaf veins tracing delicate memory into shale.
A single claw curled in sleep,
a forest frozen mid-breath—
all relics whispering the same law.

The present thins like a morning mist,
but these fossil-bound tablets,
holding stories of the past
will outlast our shadows,
and speak to whoever listens:
     This is what lived here.
     This is what was lost.
     This is what happened.

By Steven Wade Veatch

Winter Deer

They move so slightly
you might miss
the calm in their silence—
browsing bitterbrush,
noses dusted with snow.

Each breath a small hope
rising into silence.
No shelter, no promise—
just the soft surrender
to winter’s stillness.

By Steven Wade Veatch

 

The Cripple Creek Gold Camp

Come with me to the gold camp,
where headframes pierced the sky
and men chased glittering veins
underground with picks and shovels.

Dreams of riches brought my great-grandfather
from England to the Elkton mine.
He knew the darkness of tunnels,
the veins that flared like lightning through rock.
And he knew this was where he belonged.

Below ground, bells clanged,
drills rattled, explosions shook the walls,
ore cars kept their iron rhythm,
a refrain that filled both day and night.

Trains hauled rock to the mills,
tailings piled in spreading mounds,
while molten gold was poured from ore.

Come with me to the gold camp—
its echoes still thread through my blood,
the dust, the rails, the rocks
name the place I belong.

By Steven Wade Veatch

Their Day’s Work Is Done

 On Cripple Creek’s streets,
donkeys, their coats the color 
of old photographs, carry the weight of myth 
as they step through layers of time.

They are the town's memory, a living echo 
of a time when men gambled against the mountains
in their search for veins of gold.

The donkeys haul no gold ore now
as they drift past the racket of casinos
and dreams wagered by tourists.

A child reaches out, the donkey lowers its head
and accepts the gentle hand. Their ears are long 
and soft, eyes dark and deep. They are treated 
as novelties rather than living relics of the gold rush.

When night falls, their day's work is done. 
In a dark and unbounded sky, 
a thin moon hangs in the cool night,
and scattered stars begin to gleam like ore 
over the mining camp.

Lessons From the Vanished Giant

I want to know
why the woolly mammoth’s coat
no longer brushes the cold wind—
why her bones lie beneath
permafrost silence,
instead of walking
beside her calf.

I want to understand
the final breath
of the short-faced bear,
its hunger lost
in a forest that changed
faster than its hunger could adapt.

I want to study
the curve of antlers
from the Irish elk,
that once gathered the sun.
Were they too grand 
for survival, or did beauty 
simply go out of style?

I want to read the soil,
core it down to truth
and reveal the buried record 
of what pollen drifted, 
what bloomed and blossomed,
what thrived or died,
through the last glimmers
of a dying epoch.

I want to see
through the eyes of the Clovis hunter—
was it reverence or desperation
that guided their fluted points
into the great beasts?

I want to follow the patterns of retreat,
not just of glaciers, but of life—
where saber-tooth faded,
where the ground sloth sank
into myth.

I want to learn
if extinction is always
a slow forgetting,
or sometimes
a single, sharp silence
in the dark.

I want to know
what vanished
with them—
not just the animals,
but the stories
we no longer tell
around the fire.

And most of all,
I want to learn
how not to repeat
their ending.

Colorado Ascent

Sky-bound ridges beckon,
drawing the Earth into sharp relief,
each peak a timeless mystery etched in stone.
 
Granite boulders pierce the clouds,
their solemn silence roaring like thunder,
their immensity carved by the breath of time.
 
Pine forests unfurl, rooted deep,
while alpine lakes reflect the heavens
with clarity unsurpassed.
 
Faintly gleaming in forgotten veins,
gold murmurs of a bygone frenzy,
yet the mountains endure,
unyielding to the grasp of greed.
 
This is the land of rising—
where the damp soil breathes renewal
and birdsong arcs toward open skies;
where rivers leap from cliffs,
their spray soaring toward light.
 
As you climb, the trails coil upward,
the air thins to whispers,
each breath a praise to the heights,
each view a call to reach beyond.
Colorado—where the mountains stretch skyward,
and our spirits follow, ever rising.

By Steven Wade Veatch

First published in Colorado Life May/June 2025