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VJs Weekly Challenge – Recovery

Photo: Niagara Dam near Kookynie, an oasis in a dry land. Kookynie once boasted a permanent population of 3,500 people at the height of the gold rush, and double that with transients coming and going. From 1895 to 1910 it was a bustling town, when the first world war began (1914), and then later when the gold price dropped (1923), the population declined, and from the 1960s it completely diminished, and today it is listed as a ghost town with ten people.

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts …”  Rachel Carson ‘Silent Spring’

All Gone Now

Swarms covered this fragile land
as gold fevered a crowd,
and in the middle of nowhere
somewhere sprang up
from zero to thousands,
a mayor with parades,
schools and shops,
all gone now ‘cept the dust,
the train now a ghost,
the crowd has thinned,
just a couple remain
and of course, as always,
the pub with a tourist or two,
those halcyon days
will never return
though the land recovers itself.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com