Ghost Town

thanks for sharing your poem.

My pleasure, Larry.

I like it!

Thank you, Gorgeous Gabby. I'm glad you like it. :-)

:)

Jim - the commercial feel of Bodie today is certainly opposed to the hard work ethic of the miners. Some 6 or 7 Decembers ago, my wife dropped me off to hike in and overnight to climb Dunderberg Peak, and she drove back and visited Bodie. She loved it, and we have always said we would go back together. Thanks for reminding me.

Would love to see pictures of it based on your poem.

I remember a family vacation years ago when we were in Colorado. We rode on the Durango-Silverton train and travelled through one or two ghost-towns. They do seem to have a different aura about them. Quiet, reserved, yet brimming with history and stories of years gone by. Great poem Jim; thanks for the fond memories of my vacation.

Such good descriptive words to help visualize this Ghost Town.
I really enjoy reading your poems.

:-), Jenna.

Hi, Tom--The observation of the poem notwithstanding, Bodie is a wonderful place to visit and to know. The park rangers do a fantastic job of keeping boards in place, and doing what they can to help us understand the nature of the town. I'm glad this reminded you to revisit. It's sure worth it.

Thank you, Marianne. It's a funny thing about ghosts; they have their way with our poetic souls, always nudging us to bring them to life again--at least a sensitivity to their existences. History with an attitude?

Your wish is my command, Charles. Bodie Church; Benefactor of Bodie. There are others, Charles. I'll get them posted soon; they show more of random parts strewn where once were buildings.

My pleasure, DragonSoul. I'm glad the poem did that for you.

Thank you, Linda. Perhaps the images I linked for Charles will help you visualize it further. Or Cecile V.'s great articles (the link is at the base of the poem).

I've been to a ghost town once in my life, and when I was there the feeling was unbelieveable to me it actually felt like apart of myself was there.
It was a wonderful poem.
Thank you for sharing

I really like this poem. Makes me think of the old deserted gold mines out west.

My pleasure, Daytona. I know the feeling.

Thank you, Christine.

Bodie is a place born to live but a few years, and walking the town's streets is an instant time travel sequence to reach those years of birth, growth, and poignant demise.

You feel what it's like to be the first person to enter the high desert place, undeveloped and majestic, scented and alone.

You imagine the exciting discovery of gold, the feverish, raucous industry of tearing the land apart to get it, the building of a town to live and work in, a place to protect you from the harsh, mountain climate.

It's done. You've made a home. Then the precious metal depletes and there's no work. You stay or move as you must; but you have hope. How can you leave the place you built? Hope remains as money dwindles and zephyrs, snows, and isolation keep you company. The slow, constricting demise continues until flames erupt, caused by a small boy playing with matches, and seals your home's first fate.

Here, time travel ends with a blinking, encompassing glance about the town and its outlying, pockmarked hills. The glance reveals the present state of "arrested decay"--the handiwork of gifted park rangers. Then one sees the faces of other time travelers as they're captured by the stages Bodie's existence, lost in their own witness of the perspective of this piece of our nation's heritage.

It's time to leave the mountain, now. Slower, perhaps, than your drive up, but then that's what a visit with ghosts can do to you.

Another wonderful poem!

Why I am blushing! This is quite nice the poem & the plug Thank you, Jim! I've actually been spending a lot of time with Bodie..... via head historian ranger Terri Geisinger. We talked for about an hour one day this week on the cell phone and then several e-mails. Rumour has it Friends of Bodie day is tentatively August 8th this year put it on your calendar! Plans are for an old fashioned parade with old vehicles, and wagons. What fun! I'm already trying to figure out what my costume will be!

Thank you, Robin.

Too cool, Cecile. I'll put it on the calendar. I think I'll post the above comment as an article and repeat the plug for your work. You deserve it; the town deserves its next phase of glory, and the countryside enveloping Bodie cries out for visitors.

Here's a special thank you to you & a link to the Bodie related stories I have on Gather"

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977228251

Jim - thanks for a wonderful word description of Bodie - lovely poem. I remember meeting Bodie in those days when her arrested decay still showed the wonderful angles that time couldn't touch. It's been years and I'm so glad I captured her back when. I do love Cecile's writing and glad you've given her a plug here - she does quite a bit of work and is doing us all a wonderful favor by all her historical investigations, experiences and writings - they're wonderful. Have a good evening and thanks again. Salud.

hello again, Jim. Your three images of Bodie are wonderful - I especially love the shiney doorknob - that kind of material shines more each time it's grabbed. That's the way to make things - keeps them young each time they're used! SAlud.

Thank you for the poem. I don't know why I haven't been to Bodie. My mother's father worked there at one point in his life. He did something to do with welding I think.

Hey my mom and dad's house is in Sonora. My husband grew up there.

Awesome poem - I followed a link from another article and am glad I did!! Thanks! 10

Great ode to a wonderful ghost town!

Thank you for the compliment, Cecile. The link to your fine, historical articles, works just fine. I really appreciate the index you've created.

Mariana, I reached the fiery doorknob just as thunder pealed. It drew my eyes to the ghostly mill reflected in its mirror. Your sentiment to keep things new by using them is so valid! This particular know is probably at least 140 years in the rubbing. I agree with you about Cecile's work. She is so painstaking in her discoveries, and so accessible to read. Thank you for the compliments. They mean a great deal to me.

My pleasure, Penashe. Check with Cecile V. Perhaps she can shed some light on your grandfather's work for you.

Thank you for the 10, Beth. I'm glad you found the poem. check out Thank You, Bodie! and Benefactor of Bodie. I hope you'll enjoy them, too.

Thank you, Charli. I appreciate that.

Thank you and Cecile V. has contacted me. Very interesting lady. I have been trying to look up the area where she says she lives but can't find anything on my pitiful map. Of course it might just be my eyesight that is the problem. lol After reading her things and yours I am thinking I need a map of Ghost towns.

It´s so funny, somehow I missed the subscription notice link to this in my email box, Jim, so I read it after the prose article on Bodie and the lilting song of the Bodie wind as I call the second poem, thus I find myself in the enviable position of coming to this weather-worn, desert-scrubbed silver mine of a poem at the end of the series rather than at the beginning, and it indeed seems like the motherlode.

Bravo! For inciting us all to gaze off into the horizon blankly and think of lives that dug into the earth for its riches and lived hard and drank hard and were buried in the oblivion that awaits us all, with the same winds that blew across the skulls held up by Omar Khayyam as memento moris in his Sufi ghazals seven centuries ago blowing across their poorly marked graves.

I will doubtless dream of Bodie tonight, and the memories I formed their with my Danish painter friend and former lover, who taught me to see the light off the tumbleweeds at end of day there.

I love ghost towns. When we lived in New Mexico, we visited a few. The energies were very strong.

I'm glad you made contact with Cecile, Penashe.

John, I'm so sorry it has taken this long to respond to your thoughtful comments. I simply missed it. I hope your dream was everything you wished for it.

Isn't it amazing, Alice! We seem to desperately want what the past can give us, and easily rise to the energy.