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.

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

 

 

The Keeper of Tales

Grandfather's stories, 
covered with the dust of old Colorado,
come alive in the places between words,
where the mines whispered about gold,
and the mountains echoed adventure.

He talked about the West,
where the sun bled into the earth,
each tale a reminder of the grit and the gold
that ran through the veins of the land.
And of men with rough hands and weary backs
who chased dreams buried deep in unforgiving rocks.

His words created such a vivid scene—
miners’ lamps twinkling like distant stars, 
their light dancing on mine walls 
as picks clanged into ore.
I listened, breathless and wide-eyed.

Now, his voice lingers
in the spaces of my mind,
like the shadows of the majestic mountains,
guiding me through the rough 
and winding paths of my thoughts.

Grandfather, the storyteller 
still speaks, and I still listen—
each word echoing in my memory 
like the fall of a pebble in a well,
each story a stone
in the path I walk today.

—Steven Wade Veatch

A Communion of Discovery

Dedicated to Estella Leopold, conservationist.*

Melting ice washed gravels down,
burying the mammoth—hiding it through the ages.
And I found a rock at its grave, 
with secrets deep inside.
I broke it, crushed it, sifted it;
dissolved it in a beaker, 
spun it by a centrifuge, 
and peeled back layers of time.

Now only hidden fossils remain:
Pollen grains and mossy spores—
once floating on an Ice Age breeze.

Now in that communion of discovery
these small fossils yield
the deepest glimpse through time
to the world before we came, and warn
of a future we must face—
while just outside forests change, 
species die,
and life recedes.

By Steven Wade Veatch

An imagined scene of the Ice Age mammoth
found at the Florissant Fossil Beds created
by the author using AI.

*Estella Leopold assisted me in the actual paleontological research mentioned in this poem. A sediment layer associated with the burial site of a Columbian Mammoth at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument was found to contain Ice Age pollen and spores. This research resulted in a paper presented at the Geological Society of America in Denver in 2013. Estella was one of the original “Defenders of Florissant” and was instrumental in the Florissant Fossil Beds in becoming a national monument. Estella is the daughter of Aldo Leopold, who wrote the Sand County Almanac. Estella passed away February 25, 2024. She was 97 years old. 

Note: this poem is an expanded version of an earlier poem by the author entitled "Mammoth." 

One Thursday Afternoon

The Cripple Creek Mining District, Colorado, 1891

The bustling gold camp roared
as the sun began to rise 
and the clinking of picks 
striking rocks filled the air. 

The prospector, 
fueled by determination, 
placed his entire fortune on the line
as his days unfolded 
in an uncertain way.

Anticipation hung heavy, 
mingling with the scent 
of sweat and dust.
He bet it all 
for a chance 
at gold.

Tomorrow would tell the tale,
carrying with it the promise 
of either a hope fulfilled 
or a crushing disappointment
of this prospector’s dreams 
that floated in the air.

—By Steven Wade Veatch

A prospector at work. This AI image was created
by the author with the assistance of MS Designer.

A House Burned Down

Cripple Creek, Colorado

No one lives there. The house is a tomb 
with boarded up windows.
Its tar-paper skin tattered, its shingled roof—
tough as a donkey’s hoof—
has lasted through a tired century.
Inside is the scent of decay and abandonment.

It grew on a hilltop: A new square added, 
with each child born—placed 
like boxes, end-to-end—
in the gold mining camp.

One dry and breezy day a fire started. 
The sharp smell of smoke spread. 
The crackling sound of burning wood 
filled the air as raging orange flames
devoured the house.

Under a burned-black skeleton, 
a claw-foot bathtub sits in ash 
Springs of the davenport twist 
like a frozen tornado. An ornate headboard 
is on the ground, used in one era, 
destroyed in the next.

I stop to think, will my life end 
like this place? Just bits and pieces
in a pile of smoldering cinders?

By Steven Wade Veatch

Message in Stone

 By Steven Wade Veatch

Those who are gone once came to this sacred place
of remote canyon walls filled with quiet grace.
They made circles of stones to pray and to fast,
to seek a vision for guidance and join with the past.

Here, seekers waited for their spirit guide to appear
who came in many forms to give strength and end fear.
The seekers knew this place where others once prayed
and had visions of power as long as they stayed.

They left sacred images to last on cosmic red rocks:
Dancers, flute players, lizards, and birds left as pecked pocks.
An eternal art on canyon walls of symbols, visions, and more 
Left behind from those who came here before.

Now the clouds grow dark and are messengers of rain,
they bring a breeze scented with sage over the terrain.
An eagle soars as a guardian spirit above the canyon below
over the messages in stone only the ancients truly know.

Dreams in a River of Gold

Art generated by AI.

 

Beside the meandering stream,
a prospector worked his gold pan
while water tumbled over 
smooth granite boulders. 

Here the mountain stream 
grew deeper in its channel 
and formed pools, a likely place 
for gold to settle.

The prospector tirelessly shoveled, 
sifted, screened, and panned—
then picked gold nuggets 
from the black sand in his pan.

Laboring by the stream, he knew why
he left home, saying goodbye—
swapping his life for one on the frontier,
a life of hardship, danger, and brutal work. 

The reason was clear when he bedded down
by a crackling campfire, under a cold 
sky filled with stars and a half-moon. 
As he slept, next to the stream, 
the aspens whispered dreams 
making a strike, taming a new land, 
and building the West.

By Steven Wade Veatch

Garden Park Bone Beds

Near Cañon City, Colorado

Art by AI.

The sun burns in a blue, cloudless sky over bone beds.

Everything is quiet in the heat of Garden Park. A coyote darts by,
following a scent like a moth to light.

Dinosaurs once roamed here in ancient marshlands. 
In Late Jurassic times, a long-necked Camarasaurus and Diplodocus
reached up high in trees for sweet Mesozoic greenery to eat.
A Stegosaurus tried to move, mired in mud; 
a Ceratosaurus looked at her nested eggs and sniffed the humid air.

Fossil hunters and scientists have dug here since 1877, 
among the hills and cliffs along the Fourmile Creek Canyon.
Cope and Marsh1 staged part of their Bone Wars here, 
where their rivalry played out at a heated pace. 

Today, picks strike rock layers and shovels dig down through deep time
into thick Morrison mudstone to where buried bones of dinosaurs rested for millions of years.
Brushes clean, sifters shake, measurements and photos taken, and flies swatted—
a tooth of the ferocious Allosaurus pops up, then fossils of turtles and crocodiles. 
More bones, and then a flurry of discovery, wonder, and excitement. 

While standing on the brink of time, I peer into the past and learn
some secrets of Earth’s ancient times.
As the sun dips down, the day’s digging ends. 
While listening to the twilight, I let the milkweed fall 
from my hand to follow the breeze. 

Watching the evening end and the wind tease the tips of grass,
I think about these fossils and wonder what creatures, 
in a distant future, will look at our fossil remains. 
What will they make of us?

By Steven Wade Veatch
__________________________________________

1 Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, were preeminent paleontologists who battled each other for dominance in the world of 19th century paleontology.

Rendezvous

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado

By Steven Wade Veatch
 
Returning to the massive stone stump,
among the quaking aspens and green pines
where pasque flowers floored the forest,
I counted tree rings of stone—survivors.
 
As the birds sang and squirrels chattered,
the moment bloomed into an alchemy of time—a rendezvous
of the primal past with the afternoon’s warm present.
In a blaze of thought I wondered
what mark will I leave behind?

The “Big Stump” at the
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.
Photo by S. W. Veatch.

Dust and Dreams: The Rocky Road to Riches

By Steven Wade Veatch
 
They journeyed over rough roads
by horse, mule, and wagon
through meadows of grass freckled
with summer blossoms,
then through thick pine stands
and past toppled trees tilted at odd angles
to the gold mines.
 
Today, along the abandoned
roadbeds are fragments of history:
rocks fallen from ore wagons,
a blacksmith’s mule shoe,
a busted whiskey bottle,
all evidence of shattered dreams.
 
Through the foggy mist among the trees,
I thought I saw a spectral teamster
take his reins and smile
as his wagon jolted along a bumpy road
and disappeared into Colorado’s past.

Roadway under Castle Rock.
Boulder County, Colorado.
Photo date 1873
by W. H. Jackson
(jwh01420).
Credit: U.S.G.S. 

 
 

Brothers

By Steven Wade Veatch

The photo you left 
from gold rush days 
turned up today. 

It lasted over a century.
I would say go 
to Cripple Creek,
grab some gold.
Have some fun—
ride a burro, 
and look down 
the winding trail, 
to a time that didn’t 
last long enough.

Photograph courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum.

Time in Florissant

By Steven Wade Veatch

The valley is the way it should be,
formed over an endless flow of time.
Volcanoes erupted:
        Mudflows 
                  rushed  
                                  downhill
mixing rocks, boulders, and soil—knocking down trees, 
tossing them like twigs, snapping them apart, 
and burying them. Time turned trees into stone. 
From this destruction a lake formed.
Water skippers danced on its surface, 
caddis flies landed on nearby willows,
and fish lurked in its depths.

Consider the fossil insects and plants trapped 
in layers of time; and a sleeping mammoth
at rest on a layer of lost pollen, covered 
with Ice Age gravels. 

A few pine trees, marked by the Ute people, 
show this was once their home.

An old homestead sits by Grape Creek, 
its timbers whisper the past of struggling settlers.

This land, where life has stretched 
across time, from past to present, 
magnifies how short time is for me, 
and just when I learn how to live, 

it’s over. 

Petrified redwood “Trio” at the Florissant Fossil Beds. Original artwork by Charles Frizzell.

Beside the Waterfall

Published by the Ute Country News.

 

When I Return

By Steven Wade Veatch

I will stand in the aspen groves
that edge the old mine,
look at the columbines
growing in the moist ground, listen
to the woodpecker drumming,
and feel the mountain air moving
through the ponderosa pine trees.
 
How fortunate people are to live
in the same place all their life.
I know this land holds my history
and my future will end there. 

Grape Creek

 Florissant, Colorado

 

Rippling over small round rocks
in the chilled afternoon light
of Spring’s sunshine
the cold creek flows—
core of everything.
 
It exists against the odds
surrounded by green grass
lush from winter snows.
 
Twisting and turning like ribbon
it whorls into wonder where
birds splash, dip, flick, and flutter.
In casual poses, they gossip gamely
delivering their news.
 
The water moves beyond the birds
free across acres of time, and
releases me from disfiguring cities
and heaps of numbing concrete.

This poem first appeared in Colorado Life.

Grape Creek flowing through the
Florissant Fossil Beds National
Monument. Photo by S. W. Veatch

Homestead

By Steven Wade Veatch

Follow the trail 
to the homestead
where Grape Creek glitters
and the green grass 
waves in the wind.
A robin sits on last year’s stem
while a dragonfly buzzes by.

Here I sense the spirit 
of the pioneers who settled 
this land. Where 
is that spirit now?
I will follow their trail.

The Hornbek Homestead,
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado.
Photo by S. W. Veatch.