Underground

 By Steven Wade Veatch

Thunderstorms batter the sky.
The porch shakes while lightning wages war.
Black and purple mix like a bruise.
Wind whirls through the aspens.
Icy rain soaks the ground—
wet soil and decaying leaves
smell like an underground mine.
Dank scents bring memories
with annotations. My thoughts spin
then strike the borderland of my memories,
breaking through to a place
of shafts, dimly lit voids, and ore carts.
 
My great grandfather trudges
through confining spaces, groaning timbers,
dripping water, and rusting rails.
Muddy places smear his clothes with grime.
His pick bounces off rocks again and again.
Booming blasts fill the drifts with acrid
smells. A taste of sulfur lingers.
 
I see him reach down and scoop
up a handful of gold ore,
he lets it fall through his fingers,
and tells me how to live.
So much to remember.
I should have listened more,
but I am far away.
 
The blackness swallows
the flickering light of his candle
and his face recedes from view.
His words flood my mind—
a generational reckoning—
part of my ritual of becoming.
I carry some stories, like blaring bells,
others I have lost.
 
In me, these inheritances manifest:
a lifelong journey toward a glittering
horizon, but I never get there.
I should have listened more,
and now my time is gone.

Elkton mine, Cripple Creek Mining District. The author’s great grandfather worked in this mine for over two decades. Photo date 1894, courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum.

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.