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
