autumn's fall
crimson leftovers
fall, angle down
crinkling sidewalks/footpaths and lawns/grass
in
thundered color
--
when we pull up to Rhyolite
that derelict Nevada ghost city
where it lays stranded in blazing
withering intense heat
deserted, forsaken, desolate
though 100 years ago, from this Cibola
half a million ton of gold
got extracted here in 1905,
became an instant city
in barren desert by 1907--
got water mains, sidewalks,
electric lights, telephones, newspapers,
hospital, school, opera house, swimming pool,
imported Italian marble and stained glass,
stock exchange, 3 banks, 2 places of worship,
lots of brothels, 35 gambling dens, 50 saloons—
El Dorado? No;
The gold city was only a brief flash in the pan--
boomed, busted, and abandoned in less than
10 years, a faded park brochure states;
miner Tom Kelly built a bottle house from
50,000 discarded beer and liquor bottles;
and 70 years later, on the ridge behind
were created 12 chalky-white statues looking down,
“The Last Super” by Albert Szukalski,
a Belgian sculptor; through those paster-burlap
ghosts and crumbling structures, strong desert
wind blows, toward Death Valley, howling.
