If I Were a 49er: Gold in California

by Cherie Blessing

I was reading the news one morning.  It said something about a gold rush, and that very night I decided to go to California to find gold.

I was going on the California Trail.  It was the most time consuming, but it was the cheapest.  When I arrived, I bought a pick, a shovel, pan, tent, and food and water.  I started panning a a nearby stream.  The mud was cold.

After a couple of hours of hard work, I found something shiny in the pan.  It was gold!  I picked it up.  It was a gold nugget.

In a couple of days, my luck ran out, and I decided to build a farm ten miles or so from Sutter’s Mill, was gold was discovered.  I decided to start a farm because it wasn’t the gold miners who usually got rich.  It was the farmers and shop keepers.

After about a year, things quieted down in California, and silver was discovered in Nevada.  I made a decision to stay in California on my happy little farm.

Loneliness

by Cherie Blessing

 

Loneliness

 

I glow like eyes on a dead silent night.

I lie in dead black nothingness.

I watch the stars.

I stare into the desolate empty darkness around me.

I am the lonely pale expanse of greatness–the moon.

If You’re Not From Kentucky

by Cherie Blessing

If You’re Not From Kentucky

If you’re not from Kentucky,
You have never seen sunsets,
Sitting on top of a hay bale
Watching paint cascade across the sky,
And then the candle over the world is blown out.

If you are not from Kentucky,
You don’t know annoying brown,
Rabbits eating all your vegetables,
Gorging themselves with your delicious vegetables.

If you’re not from Kentucky,
You don’t know the sweet smell of hay
Flooding your nose with the scent of a barn.
You don’t know fields,
Vast and open waves of gold.
You don’t know the flowers
Sparkling the ground with their magnificent beauty.

My hair is the hay.
My legs are the trees.
My eyes are snowflakes.
My breath is the spring air.
Do you know Kentucky?