California's greatest ghost town: Bodie



Ina Coolbrith in the 1860s.

This poem is my one claim to fame as a poet; it was the Ina Coolbrith Circle award winner in 1997.  Sound pretty obscure, I guess.  Ina Coolbrith was a California poet who kept company with writers like Bret Harte and Mark Twain when they were writing in 1860's San Francisco. In her later years, Coolbrith was a mentor to Jack London and other writers from her desk at the Oakland Library.

People don't know much about Twain's work in this era, but I think it is some of his best. They all were real Victorian hippies.  It guess that's an oxymoron, but in truth, it does work.  They were rule breakers; innovators of their time. 

Here's my award winning poem; I've given it a bit of a facelift from the original. 

Echoes in Bodie

You can hear them
when cruel Sierra winds dance
through deadly silence,
the lifeblood of a time gone by.
Adventurers stomping
through winter brutality,
as wagons and coaches
rattle the souls of those arriving,
more coming
everyday.

Laughter resonated
on sagebrush laden streets,

as unblemished, glittering silver

flowed like saloon whisky

into pockets of once poor men.

Their callused palms grasping tight

to their fortunes,

as gunfights emerged

in fits of greed

turning virgin snowfall

brilliant red

Now,

affluent splendor

is but history,
but when echoes promenade

through stillness,

You'll hear them
rushing to the mines

one more time.