Guest Poet Wyatt Spears

Donkey

Humble, grey

Trudging, straining, enduring

Hooves, rocks, veins, ore

Weighing, gleaming, tempting

Radiant, precious

Gold!

By Wyatt C. Spears

A donkey and a prospector in Cripple Creek, Colorado—the World’s Greatest Gold Camp. Photo courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. CCDM 808.

Note: Wyatt's poem is the Diamanté form. He is 16 years old and is the nephew of  Steven Veatch. 

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

The Pick Boys

The Cripple Creek Mining District

By Steven Wade Veatch

From old and brittle photographs, 
the faces of young boys look out. 
One puffs on a spit-soaked cigar 
from the corner of his mouth. 
Another scrub-faced boy smiles.
Both pose with the men.

The story is clear—
When a father was killed or disabled,
some boys worked in the mines 
as breadwinners. Other boys quit school 
to follow the adventure of mining. 

They were the pick boys
who ran errands, fetched supplies, 
carried dull drills and picks 
to blacksmiths for sharpening, 
lugged water to thirsty miners,
and tended the donkeys.

They tramped deep underground. 
Timbers creaked and water dripped.
Grime stained their clothes 
from the damp and muddy 
places they worked. 

Endless blackness hovered 
around flickering candlelight. 
Rock dust from drilling, fumes from blasting, 
and smoke from candles burning filled the air. 

Deadly gasses seeped from rocks.

The roar of blasting and the racket 
of drills was constant. Yet they worked 
in deliberate routines to earn their meager pay
in a time and place so different from today.

A Pick Boy at work. This AI image was created by the author
with the assistance of DALL·E and MS Bing.

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.