Abandoned Gold Mine

In the mine, looking at gray 

soil oozing water,

you feel the folly of digging

a hole in a mountain and hoping

wooden beams and air will hold up

all the rock above you. Mining

is faith. You look at rusted

iron tracks and the one tiny-

wheeled ore car no one stole yet.

This is a burrow where the Gold Rush

came to die. Yet even you,

fever -free, son and grandson

of gold miners, look at quartz

around your feet and want

to see deep yellow flecks,

desperately want gold to be.

Building, blasting, mucking,

loading, pushing, lifting. Sucking

rock dust in, coughing it out.

Stripping at end of day to show

you didn't steal high-grade ore.

Cuts, contusions. That's the search,

the work. The mine was not theirs.

Decades later, you stand in the cool

tomb and feel the drive that drove

them all here to lay down tracks

to trek into a mountain's dream.

hans ostrom 2022