Page 56 - br-sep-2022

September 2022 September 2022

POETRY CORNER

I can only imagine how it was then.
The Gates to Hell
Before you’d count from one to ten,
In eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, The township throve like never again,
They dug rocks out of a Calico mine, Until the price of silver fell
Hauled them away on the Calico line, When there was no commerce or
When silver cast its spell. gain,
To heed the call and follow the star, No mechanism for sustain,
Prospectors came from near and far, They tore up the rails of the Calico
To boarding house and brothel and bar, train,
With many a tale to tell, Leaving nothing but a shell.

Chorus It’s a ghost town now it’s said.
In the dark, a miner found, I have heard that it is dead.
As he worked below the ground, Nothing moves in house or shed
If a little bird made a sound, Where people used to dwell.
He’d know that all was well. No boarding house, no brothel, no
But if that little bird did not sing, bar,
And did not flap its tiny wing, No prospectors, come from near or
That would make alarm bells ring, far,
At the Gates to Hell. No little bird, no big cigar.
Not a whiff or smell.

Paul J Openshaw

Tarantula

She lines the walls with silk in her apartment
underground.
She lines the walls with silk and keeps her babies
gathered round.
Whatever may be the cost, her hole she will
defend,
And she’ll do what must be done, and she does it
to the end.
It’s strange to me and you, but that’s what
tarantulas do.
That’s what tarantulas do, in deepest darkest Peru.

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