A fixer upper, she laughed,
driving by an old crumbling cabin
along a backroad outside 
a mountain town deep in 
the San Juan Mountains
of Colorado.

Leaves were turning yellow now,
returning to the forest floor
ready for winter snow and cold.

Stopping to explore the site,
stories abounded from tired ghosts
roaming too long in 
three shambling rooms 
with curling wallpaper 
ordered from 
Sears & Roebuck
when life was
once young.

What were those stories of 
struggling simpler hard times
written somewhere in a long lost
family bible?

Stories of small joys of
a wagon trip west, 
isolation & love,
storms & heat,
cold & snow
dust & drought,
horses & cattle,
gardens & work,
long days,
short nights,
gnarled hands,
root cellars,
death.

Children’s
children’s 
children
living on the coast
with only faded family photos
of a wedding in Chicago,
a man and a woman,
of two children,
their stories lost forever
in unmarked graves
in a valley below
tall mountains
somewhere in
the San Juans
of Colorado.