A Photo at the Museum

 By Steven Wade Veatch

 

I see you in the fading photo looking back at me.

Evidence that shows you lived.

I wonder who you were, touching the world,

learning in a one-room school, following

a deer trail, and then working in a gold mine.

Nothing else mattered. Just years passing by.

You stepped into an unknowable darkness,

then you were gone, and your possessions disappeared—

one

by

one.

As your world collides with mine,

I ask:

What will I leave behind?

A yearbook, a photograph album, postcards, letters.

Will they go to a museum?

Or a dumpster?

Will they fill a cigar box?

I am lucky, I filled

someone’s heart.

A young miner in the Cripple Creek Mining District. Photo circa 1899. Courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum.

Brothers

Photograph courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum

The photo you left

from gold rush days

turned up today.

It lasted over a century.

I would say go

to Cripple Creek,

again, grab

some gold.

Have some fun—

ride a burro,

and look down

the winding trail,

to a time that didn’t

last long enough.

By Steven W. Veatch

 

Uptop: A Winter Poem

By Steven Wade Veatch

A winter wind blows swirling flakes of snow
that blankets the quiet town of Uptop. 
Light from a coal-oil lamp casts
a golden glow down a silent, powdery street.

People of Uptop long for spring days;
the shifting realm of white to robust green
when flowers spread a chorus of colors
in an alpine crescendo.

For decades they came over highland passes;
searching for gold in streams or silver in veins.
Others started ranches where the grass was good. 
And each one tamed the mountain wilderness.

The depot built by section hands still stands 
that once met fortune seekers coming over the Pass.
Today the rails are gone and travelers are rare.
Only a few stay in the small town of Uptop.

On Sunday at the Chapel by the Wayside
a church bell rings—renewing spirits
of humbled hearts who stay another year,
in the forgotten town of Uptop, Colorado.

_______________________________________
Directions to the ghost town of Uptop, Colorado:
Two turnoffs to Uptop ghost town are located off Hwy 160:
• 20 minutes east of Ft. Garland, CO: turn at mile marker 276.
• 15 minutes west of La Veta or 20 minutes west of Walsenburg: turn at mile marker 281.