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Saturday, May 7, 2022

A Headframe to the Sky

By Steven Wade Veatch


Faint traces of a wagon road in backcountry

curve to a gold mine hidden in the trees.

The mine’s headframe reaches to the sky—

a crown of confidence on unbreakable dreams.

 

The ore sorting house rusts through time

while moss invades stone foundations.

Blue pines rock and wild grasses tip in the wind.

Gray clouds nod in the distance.

 

Miners once made their way with burning candles

toward rhythmic clangs of hammers and drills,

while stepping aside for donkey-drawn ore cars

running on narrow rails deep underground.

 

Two men, with blistered hands,

pounded steel that drilled the rock

then packed dynamite in the holes they made.

A rattail of fuse detonated a round with a thundering blast.

 

Timbers in tight embrace held the Earth in place

as spectral Tommyknockers scurried and hid

in opaque blackness beyond the candle flame

while golden veins and rich ore wait discovery. 

 

Now the gold mine is silent, the sheave wheel stopped.

The underground workings—still as held breath.

The mine a monument to how the West was won.

A progress secured by the lure of gold.

 

Morning shadows cover yellow spills of flowers

where deer dip down to browse nearby.

The mine still makes its claim on the land

Harkening to better days and simpler ways.


Empire Lee mine, Cripple Creek mining district.
Photo by Gene Mourning, courtesy of the
Western Museum of Mining and Industry.