There's never enough ghosts in ghost towns
Muttered one man beside a homely manikin
Dressed as a miner In ill-fitting clothes
And carefully posed as if about to strike gold
In an actual hole in the rock below
The rickety museum, one of the few hotels
Left to stand after a century of abandonment
And fires on the edge of the relentless creek.
Chunks of galena of various sizes lay about,
Along with heaps of rusted late Victorian
Tools and machinery. The immigrant
From Manhattan, arrived with the hippies,
Now in her seventies, played a few bars
Of Procol Harum on the vintage pump organ
And then explained to daughter how the ore
Was purified enough to weigh, how blown
Glass spheres the size of softballs contained
Carbon tetrachloride to hurl at fires, then run
Before the sudden lack of oxygen killed
Everyone caught down in the hole. Daughter
Nodded gravely. Imagine throwing that ball.
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