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Posts Tagged ‘pony express’

Irreplaceable 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on August 29, 2026| 7 Comments »


 
Here, there is highway heading east and west. 
A great basin we have named The Great Basin
is rung by mountains and filled with low brush
and not much that man has touched except
this small roadside stand that describes how once
the Pony Express riders would use this rugged route,
changing horses every ten to fifteen miles. 
In the car, my daughter sleeps while my husband
and I stand in a merciless wind, reading how 
it took only two days after the first transcontinental
telegraph was sent for the Pony Express to shut down.
How much of what we rely on now will become obsolete
in a heartbeat? The postage stamp? The satellite?
When I return to the car, I squeeze the solid hand 
of my husband, trace the soft skin of my daughter’s arm,
grateful for gestures no technology can supplant.
Later, we tell inside jokes. Later, we ooh and ahh 
as lightning bisects the Great Basin. Nothing can 
replace this, I think, as my daughter tangles her hand
mindlessly in my hair and I lean in toward her touch.

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On the South Platte River Trail in Northeastern Colorado

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 4, 2021| 2 Comments »


 
Some people say there’s nothing out there,
nothing but plains and the Platte and the sky.
A whole horizon of nothing,
and a barbed wire fence to hold back
all that nothing. But when you drive
through that nothing
perhaps a young scrappy man
on a half-breed mustang
will ride through your thoughts,
and hand you a letter
from one hundred sixty years ago.
For you, he’ll say with a tip of his hat
before he gallops away toward the west.
What might the past have to say to you
sent via Pony Express?
Perhaps something about
the beauty of nothing,
or how the road you choose matters.
Go ahead, friend, what are you waiting for?
Open that letter.

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