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

 

 

A Warming Earth

Snowmelt seeps into the ground; 
yet the forest struggles.
Moss clings to granite, its grip 
loosens with each season.
Lichens die.

Silent stones whisper stories
of ancient times and vanished worlds.
Fossils in rocks show life shifts, falters,
and edges toward its endgame
or a new beginning.

We turn away, indifferent, 
From warnings 
as the climate fractures 
around us.
The night unravels, 
stars slip away.
So little time 
is left
for us.

Image created by the author using AI.

To Whom It May Concern

Let me tell her story—
not in tidy lists, but in the weight 
of what she’s done.

Let me tell you about 
the way she tilts her head
when she’s listening,
absorbing the unspoken 
edges of your worry, the radiant 
spill of your joy.

Can I tell you a bit about
the quiet strength
that settles over a room
when she enters,
not demanding attention,
but providing a steady anchor?

I'd like to share something else.
She looks beyond the shine,
past what the eye first catches,
to where unexpected beauty 
waits in broken fences, abandoned farms,
and fresh shoots pushing through 
the fields of thawed spring soil.

She laughs like the sun finally showing up,
and when she listens,
it’s like someone holding your hand
just right—no words, just understanding.

Let me give you a little insight:
she navigates challenges
with a quiet determination,
solves problems with a gentle touch—
never bulldozing, always building.

I want to tell you
her kindness isn't loud.
It's in the small things—
a message, a meal, a moment.
She gives, to family, friends, 
and strangers without needing to be seen.

Within her, a rare balance lives:
loyalty that never wavers,
compassion that knows no bounds,
a mind keen as winter air,
a heart soft as spring rain.

She is more than capable.
She is remarkable.

Sincerely,

Someone who knows

—By Steven Wade Veatch

Extinction: Fossils of A Vanished Future

—By Steven Wade Veatch

They ruled the world once,
lumbering giants beneath a fiery sun,
that trampled ferns 
with their colossal strides.

No one mourned their passage:
A death simply by a massive rock and chance.
As the world burned, the sky turned to ash.
Next the Earth froze.
What remained was cold silence;
the stillness of a kingdom gone.

Now we walk on this earth, 
masters of fire and thought,
builders of cities that stretch to the sky—
where we weave our dreams into metal and glass.
But listen closely—the oceans rise 
like ancient prophets while nature
whispers warnings.

We are the asteroid now, 
the architects of our own destruction. 
Not by fire from the sky, 
but by the slow smothering of our planet.

Will we fall as the dinosaurs did, 
victims of a fate we cannot outrun?
Or will we rise, learning from the bones of beasts
and the spotlight of our science?

The dinosaurs left no poets, 
no songs, no warnings carved on stone.
When we vanish will there be silence once more?
Or will the Earth find a new voice,
one that hums with life that does not know us,
does not need us, and does not contemplate
what we could have been?

The final moments of a T. rex during the start of the
Cretaceous extinction. Image by the author using
AI.

Clovis Once Upon the Land

Day dawns
Morning brings
An Ice Age breeze

Glaciers retreat
Pathways open
To an ice-free corridor

Distant ice 
Endless views
Earth beneath the sky

Early migrants
Ancient hunters
Spread across the land

Mysterious Clovis
Journey far
Intrepid people

Spreading east
Some go south
Prospering across the land

Mother mammoth
Baby follows
Herds upon the meadow

Mammoths graze
Others drink
Soon to drift away

Distinctive points
Superior work
Made of jasper or of chert

Quartzite cores
Chipping blanks
Make deadly edges 

Quiet stalking
Lethal spear
Hunters make their play

Thrusting spear
Penetrating power
Delivers lethal blow

Scraping hides
Roasting meat
Over glowing embers 

Thankful hunters
Ritual offerings
A shaman dances

Itinerant camps
Family clans
Move across the land

Centuries pass
Clovis vanish
No longer anywhere

Working trowel
Sifting tray
Excavate a buried site 

Material remains
Revealing secrets
To learn about their ways