Gold, Dust

The Gold Rush wanes
by the time two brothers
reach northern California.

It will last forever, they believe. Visions of free
shiny stuff glittering in foothill streams
sustained them for four brutal months.

What is the price of leaving wives, children
on Prince Edward Island?
Cost of gangrene from axe injury?
Tab of heavy drinking, knife fights?

It’s the rush. Gold glinting in creek beds.
$16 to $20 a day. Fast money, always a rush,
the rush of being flush.

The two Irishmen straggle into Placerville.
Trash mounds higher than wagon roofs, abandoned
shanties. Scrawny pack mules pick at garbage, gravel.

They will not return East.
They lack fortitude for another crossing,
no gold to pay their way.

Not risk-takers by nature, they reclaim
laborer roots, travel
to the Central Valley, work wheat fields.

They don’t speak of failure or regret,
but each morning brings dread about the day
ahead, and the next one following. 

They rush nowhere. Not even sun is golden.

(Published in Woodcrest Magazine, 2023)